NCLBhttps://edexcellence.net/taxonomy/term/7/all
enGetting serious about college and career readinesshttps://edexcellence.net/articles/getting-serious-about-college-and-career-readiness
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Getting serious about college and career readiness</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/getting-serious-about-college-and-career-readiness-gandal.jpg?itok=7Mauklds" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-ext-author-name field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Matt Gandal</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">April 21, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, our country is entering a new chapter in education reform. After fifteen years of work by states and school districts to raise standards, disaggregate data, and close gaps, the federal government is taking the foot off the gas and leaving more decisions to the states and local school officials, including those about measures, metrics, incentives, and interventions.</p>
<p>For those of us who have been working with states for many years toward the goal of college and career readiness for all students, this is a period of great excitement—and, admittedly, some trepidation. Excitement because there's a real opportunity for states to build on the good work that has already been accomplished, make midcourse corrections, and spark needed innovation. Trepidation because if state leaders and advocates aren't careful, more than a decade of important work to establish more meaningful, rigorous expectations for our schoolchildren could be undone.</p>
<p>Although the No Child Left Behind Act outlived its relevance, let's not overlook the significant progress that states made during its time frame. As recently as the early 1990s, very few states even had standards. Expectations for students varied district by district and school by school, which led to great inequities and achievement gaps. One prominent 1994 study showed that students earning As in their courses in high-poverty schools were actually <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ResearchRpts/grades.html"><strong>achieving at th</strong><strong>e same level as those earning D</strong><strong>s in low-poverty schools</strong></a>. Translation: Disadvantaged students were held to much lower standards in their classrooms, and the impact of this was borne out by lower college-going and college success rates.</p>
<p>By the late 1990s, most states had established statewide standards and assessments to raise the floor for all students, but the quality and rigor of those expectations was, at best, mixed.</p>
<p>In 2004, Achieve, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and the Education Trust released a seminal report that <a href="http://www.achieve.org/files/ReadyorNot.pdf"><strong>called on states to align K–</strong><strong>12 standards</strong></a> with college and workplace expectations so that high school prepared students for the real world. This sparked a round of work by states to recalibrate their standards in accordance with higher education and employer expectations.</p>
<p>"College and career readiness" became the goal for all students, and states sought to align their standards with that target. In 2008, this served as the impetus for the Common Core State Standards initiative, when governors and state schools chiefs decided to lock arms and develop consistent "college- and career-ready" standards based on the best models in the states and in other high-achieving countries.</p>
<p>Fast-forward to today. Despite the politicization of the issue, most states still have rigorous standards in place, which have been validated by higher education and employers as meeting their readiness expectations. This is a major step forward from the previous era of weak-to-middling standards, or even no standards at all.</p>
<p>Here's the rub: A growing number of states are reopening their standards and rethinking the decisions they previously made about aligned assessments. And all states will be revamping their accountability systems over the next eighteen months in response to ESSA. If these decisions are made on the basis of the wrong criteria, or simply to appease noisy critics on the Left or Right, it could set back progress considerably.</p>
<p>Oklahoma is a case in point. In its haste to express its disdain for the Common Core, the legislature required the state department of education to revise the standards but forbade them from using any content from the Common Core. As a result, they hamstrung the educators who were chosen to write the new standards by ruling out a lot of rigorous content.</p>
<p>States that are serious about college and career readiness need to build on the best of what's been done before rather than retreat from it. Here's what it will take to maintain progress:</p>
<p><strong>Resist pressures to lower the standards.</strong> It won't help students. Maintaining high expectations is critical if students are to be well prepared for the competitive world they'll enter after high school. States revising standards and assessments should engage higher education and business leaders in the process to ensure alignment with their expectations. This will require genuine, not cursory, engagement. If higher education institutions and employers won't validate the standards and assessments, particularly at the high school level, they're not worth adopting.</p>
<p>To their credit, national higher education organizations are speaking out about this. The National Association of System Heads, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, and a new coalition of college and university leaders called Higher Ed for Higher Standards recently released <a href="http://higheredforhigherstandards.org/aligningexpectations/"><strong>recommendations making a compelling case for higher education’s seat</strong></a> at the table as states rework K–12 standards and assessments.</p>
<p><strong>Deliver supports and close gaps.</strong> Higher standards will have an impact only if we support the students who aren't meeting them. That requires early warning systems and targeted interventions. At the high school level, assessments should have college-ready cut scores, and students who haven't reached the college-ready standard by the end of eleventh grade should be provided specialized courses and supports designed to catch them up by graduation. California pioneered this strategy with its Early Assessment Program, and it got results. Today, most states have the tools to do this, but very few have instituted the courses and supports.</p>
<p><strong>Address the "career" side of "college- and career-ready."</strong> There's promising new work underway in states to improve the quality and rigor of career-focused programs and scale career pathways that lead to meaningful post-secondary credentials and well-paying jobs. This spring, twenty-four states and the District of Columbia will receive grants from the Council of Chief State School Officers to advance this work, thanks to an investment by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. States will need to build new measures and metrics into their accountability systems to place greater value on these pathways and credentials as part of a system that encourages and supports college and career readiness for all students.</p>
<p><strong>Break down the silos.</strong> For all of this work to take root, higher education institutions and employers need to be working closely with K–12 schools to align expectations and create smoother transitions for students from high school to college to employment. This is the most important work of all, and the most difficult. States should use policy, resources, and the bully pulpit to incentivize this cross-sector work while removing barriers that stand in its way.</p>
<p>States that successfully address these issues will become the pioneers in the post-No Child Left Behind era. They will successfully bring together the excellence and equity goals that have been at the heart of the reform movement for the past two decades. And they will show how their newfound flexibility can be used to accelerate progress rather than upend it.</p>
<p><em>Matt Gandal is the president and founder of Education Strategy Group, a consulting firm specializing in K–12, higher education, and workforce solutions.</em></p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This piece was <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/04/20/getting-serious-about-college-and-career-readiness.html">originally published in a slightly different form</a> at</em> Education Week.</p>
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</ul>Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:54:27 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59491 at https://edexcellence.netESSA oversight hearing: Full transcripthttps://edexcellence.net/articles/essa-oversight-hearing-full-transcript
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>ESSA oversight hearing: Full transcript</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/essa-oversight-hearing-full-transcript_0.jpg?itok=enhtbAqs" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/education-gadfly">The Education Gadfly</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">April 13, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><em>On Tuesday, April 12, 2016, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a full committee hearing titled “ESSA Implementation in States and School Districts: Perspectives from the U.S. Secretary of Education,” the first of a series of oversight hearings on the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Chairman Lamar Alexander delivered an opening statement to Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. and asked Secretary King two rounds of questions. What follows is the transcript of these talks.</em></p>
<p><em>Of particular interest to those of us at Fordham (besides the very important back-and-forth about the appropriate federal role in education and the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches) is the issue of flexibility around <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/draft-essa-regulations-a-mixed-bag-for-educational-excellence">eighth-grade math assessments for advanced students</a>. That is addressed toward the end of the transcript.</em></p>
<p align="center"><strong>***</strong></p>
<p align="center"><strong>Senator Alexander Opening Statement</strong></p>
<p>Mr. Secretary, as you know, I urged the president to nominate an education secretary because I thought it was important to have a confirmed secretary accountable to the United States Senate when the department was implementing the new law fixing No Child Left Behind.</p>
<p>You have sworn to discharge your duties faithfully. That is your oath of office, and you have said in hearings here that you would “abide by the letter of the law.”</p>
<p>So this hearing is about whether your employees are doing that or not doing that.</p>
<p>I don’t think that I need to rehearse the fact that this bill passed by a huge margin, 359-64 in the House and 85-12 in the Senate. The president signed it and called it a “Christmas miracle.”</p>
<p>The reason we were able to achieve such unusual unanimity and consensus is, to put it bluntly, that local school boards, classroom teachers in states, had gotten tired of the U.S. Department of Education telling them so much about what to do.</p>
<p>It wasn’t just Republicans complaining or governors complaining—you often hear that kind of thing when it comes to giving responsibility to those closest to the children. This came from the school superintendents, from the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, chief state school officers, almost everyone involved in education.</p>
<p>There hasn’t been a broader coalition in a long time.</p>
<p>Their objective was the fact that the Department of Education had become a national school board, telling Kansas what their standards must be, telling Tennessee how to fix failing schools, telling Washington state how to evaluate teachers.</p>
<p>So the legislation we passed not only got rid of those things—we went further in a remarkable way and have explicit prohibitions on what a future secretary might do.</p>
<p>This was all a dramatic change; it’s called the “largest devolution of responsibility for education from the federal government to the states in twenty-five years.”</p>
<p>But it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on if not implemented properly.</p>
<p>This is the second hearing in what will be at least six oversight hearings of implementation of the new law. Already we are seeing disturbing evidence of an Education Department that is ignoring the law that the twenty-two members of this committee worked so hard to craft.</p>
<p>It wasn’t easy to pass a law. There were crocodiles at every corner of the pond.</p>
<p>One of those—and I see Senator Bennett here, and we had vigorous discussions over this—was the issue of “comparability.” That’s a provision that was put into the law first in 1970. It says school districts have to provide at least comparable services with state and local funding to Title I schools and non-Title I schools.</p>
<p>But the law also says that school districts shall not include teacher pay when they measure spending for purposes of comparability.</p>
<p>This committee has debated several times whether or not teacher pay should be excluded. Senator Bennet for example: He not only felt very strongly about this, he had a proposal to change it. It wasn’t adopted. I felt strongly about it, I offered an amendment to change it. It was defeated.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the United States Congress made two decisions about this issue, as reflected in the law we passed last year.</p>
<p>First, we chose not to change the comparability language in the law, so the law still says teacher pay may not be included in that computation.</p>
<p>And second, we added a reporting requirement—that school districts report the amount they spend on each student, including teacher salaries, so that parents and teachers could know what’s being spent and could make their own decisions about what is fair and what is equitable, rather than the federal government mandating it.</p>
<p>One thing that the law that the president signed in December did not do was change the requirement that says teacher salaries may not be included when you’re computing comparability.</p>
<p>But here’s what your department did on April 1.</p>
<p>You tried to do what Congress did not do last year. And you tried to do it by regulating another, separate provision in the law.</p>
<p>In a proposed rule making session, here’s what you proposed: forcing districts to include teacher salaries in how they measure their state and local spending. And to require that state and local spending in Title I schools be at least equal to the average spent in non-Title I schools.</p>
<p>If that were adopted, your proposal would require a complete, costly overhaul of almost all the state and local finance systems in the country, something we did not pass in the law.</p>
<p>It would force teachers to transfer to new schools, something we did not pass in the law.</p>
<p>It would require states and school districts to move back to the burdensome practice of detailing every individual cost to comply with “supplement, not supplant,” when the law as expressively written was to relieve some of that burden.</p>
<p>According to the Council of Great City Schools, your proposed rule would cost $3.9 billion dollars—just for their sixty-nine urban school districts—to eliminate the differences in spending between the schools.</p>
<p>Now, I’m not interested today in debating whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea to include teacher salaries when computing comparability—the plain fact of the matter is that the law specifically says the department on its own cannot do it.</p>
<p>Mr. Secretary, not only is what you’re doing against the law; the way you’re trying to do it is against another provision in the law.</p>
<p>To accomplish your goals on comparability, you are using the so-called “supplement, not supplant” provision that is supposed to keep local school districts from using federal Title I dollars as a replacement for state and local dollars in low-income schools.</p>
<p>Now, according to a Politico story published on December 18, the former secretary of education said: “Candidly, our lawyers are much smarter than many of the folks who were working on this bill.”</p>
<p>I don’t know whether that means the twenty-two senators on the committee, or all of the staff sitting behind us.</p>
<p>I am not sure how smart we are, but we’re smart enough to write a law in plain English, and we’re also smart enough to anticipate that your lawyers would attempt to ignore what we wrote and try to move around it.</p>
<p>So we included specific prohibitions in the so-called “supplement, not supplant” provision that would prohibit you from doing the very things you are proposing to do.</p>
<p>Section 1118(b)(4) says, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or permit the Secretary to prescribe the specific methodology a local educational agency uses to allocate State and local funds.” And Section 1605 said, “Nothing in this title shall be construed to mandate equalized spending per pupil for a State, local educational agency, or school.”</p>
<p>Mr. Secretary, I’ll have more to say about this in my question time, and I am going to ask you about this. But I want you to know—and particularly those lawyers who think none of us are very smart up here—I want them to know that I’m smart enough, and I believe there are others too, to use every power we have to make sure the law is implemented the way we wrote it. Including our ability to overturn such rules when they become final, and including using the appropriations process.</p>
<p>And if you try to force states to follow these regulations that ignore the law, I’ll encourage them to request a hearing, which they have a right to do with the department. And if they lose, I’ll encourage them to take you to court.</p>
<p>I’m not the only one who can read the law. You’re going to come against a coalition of groups as broad as anything we have ever had in education—of governors, teachers’ organizations, chief state school officers—who are tired of your department telling them so much about what to do about the fifty million children in the one hundred thousand public schools.</p>
<p>They’ve already sent you a letter about that.</p>
<p>Wisconsin Superintendent Tony Evers, a well-respected chief state school officer and a member of the rulemaking committee, said last week that "congressional intent isn't necessarily being followed here.”</p>
<p>The school superintendents’ association says that the prohibitions in the law, “in tandem with Congress' deliberate act of leaving comparability unchanged, makes a seemingly tight case against expanding ‘supplement, not supplant.’”</p>
<p>You’ve testified here that you will “abide by the letter of the law.”</p>
<p>It’s not abiding by the letter of the law to require local school districts to use teacher salaries and equalize spending between Title I and non-Title I schools.</p>
<p>It’s not abiding by the letter of the law to use the “supplement, not supplant” provision to achieve your goals for comparability when Congress debated this issue and chose not to make any changes in the law.</p>
<p>I’m making such a point of this today because we’re at the beginning of the implementation of a law that affects, as I said, 3.4 million teachers and fifty million students in one hundred thousand public schools.</p>
<p>The states are busy working on their plans for Title I money. They have a clear law that changes the direction of what federal policy is.</p>
<p>I’m determined to see the law is implemented in the way that we wrote it.</p>
<p>I think it’s important at the beginning of this implementation to make sure that you, as well as those who work for you at the department, understand that.</p>
<p>They are not elected to anything. And you are confirmed by the U.S. Senate to faithfully execute the laws, and you said you would abide by the letter of the law in your confirmation proceeding, and I expect that to be the case.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Senator Alexander First Round of Questions</strong></p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Preliminarily, Dr. King, we’re talking about Title I plans for federal dollars. States may apply for those dollars, submitting a plan, and that constitute<strike>s</strike> about 4 percent of all the money that state and local governments spend on one hundred thousand public schools. Now, there’s more federal money than that, but it’s not covered by Title I. So we’re talking about for that amount of money, what instructions you can give. And second I would ask you this: You mentioned guidances coming out. Do you agree that guidances are merely illustrative and are not intended to be legally binding on local school districts?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: That’s right, as we’ve discussed. Guidance is intended to provide clarity and to provide examples of best practices. We do not believe guidance has the force of law. It often includes our interpretation of the law, again, to provide clarity.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Thank you, Dr. King. Let’s talk about comparability. There’s a provision in the act, as I mentioned in my opening comments, first put there in 1970, that says school districts have to provide at least comparable services with state and local funding to Title I schools and non-Title I schools.</p>
<p>Now, the law also says on comparability in Section 1118 (c)(2)(B), for purposes of this subsection, in determining that computation, “Staff salary differentials for years of employment shall not be included in some determination.”</p>
<p>Now do you agree, yes or no, the law prohibits requiring local school districts to use teacher salaries when demonstrating they’re providing Title I schools with at least comparable services as non-Title I schools?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: You are referencing the comparability section as opposed to the “supplement, not supplant” section.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> That’s correct.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Yes, I believe that’s an accurate interpretation of the comparability section of the law.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> You’ve had a chance to study the law. In your opinion, did Congress make any changes in the comparability section when we reauthorized the law last year?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: I don’t believe there were changes to the comparability section, but there were changes to “supplement, not supplant.”</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Did we change section 1118(c)(2)(B), the comparability section?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: To the best of my recollection, no.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> No we didn’t change it. Now, your proposal in April to the negotiated rule making committee, on a different section—“supplement, not supplant”—says a local school district may determine the methodology it will use to allocate state and local funds provided that methodology results in spending of local funds in a way that’s equal to or greater than the average spending per pupil in non-Title I schools.”</p>
<p>And you also say that methodology must provide a basic educational program as defined under state and local law that is used in each Title I school. Would you agree that that language the method that local school districts must use?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: No, I appreciate you making the distinction between comparability and “supplement, not supplant”.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Wait a second, in the “supplement, not supplant” [section], it says provided that that methodology that the local school uses 1) provides at least the average spending per pupil in Title I schools as is provided in non-Title I schools I talked about and 2) provides the basic educational program. How could that not be the defining of a methodology that a local school district must use?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: The proposed regulation is careful to maintain districts’ flexibility with determining…</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Now, wait a minute Mr. Secretary. The words are “provided that methodology must 1) and 2).” The question is, are you not defining a methodology when you use the words “providing that methodology is X and Y.”</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: We are not. We are laying out what criteria are necessary…</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> But you use the words “provided that methodology.” “Provided that methodology” are the words you used.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: …followed by a set of words that describe the criteria by which that methodology would meet the principal of “supplement, not supplant”.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> So you define the methodology?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: We do not.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> You do! How can you sit here and say that? Now, we may not be very smart up here—or I may not be, let me speak for myself. I can read, “provided that methodology does X, does Y.” You are defining a methodology when what we put in the law was that nothing in that section of the law “supplement, not supplant”—which has nothing to do with the comparability section—nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or permit the secretary to prescribe the specific methodology a local education agency uses or to equalize local spending.</p>
<p>Or in other words, we anticipated that you were going to try to not follow the law, and we wrote in the law you couldn’t prescribe a specific methodology.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: As I indicated, we do not prescribe the specific methodology; we leave the methodology to districts.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> “Provided that methodology results in X, provided that methodology results in Y.” How is that not providing a methodology?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: And those are criteria in how to evaluate a methodology that would be determined by a district that would ensure that the Title I dollars are, in fact, supplemental.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Mr. King, do you how ridiculous the statement is you just made? If I read you plain English, if I say A, B, C and you say it’s D,E,F, how can that be?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Again, I would characterize it differently. The question here is, a methodology that is district-determined must achieve A and B. And A and B ultimately define “supplement, not supplant,” which is to ensure that the Title I dollars are used in a way that is not supplemental.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Well, the law intended that states would have more flexibility in local school districts. I’m already over my time. I’ve already violated my own rule. So I’ll conclude and stay for a second round of questions.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Senator Alexander Second Round of Questions</strong></p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Senator Murphy has said in his exchange with you that you weren’t prescribing a methodology in the “supplement, not supplant” section we were discussing. You were merely saying that states and local school districts could use their own methodology as long as they got the result that was desired. Is that right?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: They can use their own methodology in order to ensure that they fulfill the principle of “supplement, not supplant.”</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> And in defining what we mean by—in your proposed rule, and I was listening to what you said when you described what that role was. Would it be accurate to say that the local education agency—the school district—has to demonstrate that the combined state and local per-pupil expenditures, including personnel expenditures, at each Title I school is not less than the average combined state and local per-pupil expenditures at non-Title I schools? Is that about right?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: It’s that the allocation of state and local funds to Title I schools has to be at least equal to the average non-Title I school. An approach might include looking at staffing and program provision, but another approach might be a student funding formula approach.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> But in any event, it would have to include teachers and personnel, right?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: It would include the total allocation of state and local dollars.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Did you realize that that’s precisely the definition in Senator Bennett’s amendment on comparability when he sought to amend Section 1120, which didn’t succeed, and which he acknowledged this morning didn’t succeed? So the effect of your proposed rule is to change the comparability law, which Congress did not change.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Again, we’re not addressing comparability here, we’re addressing “supplement, not supplant.”</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> No, but the effect of it would be. You’d have the same effect if you were to change the comparability law, which has been in law since 1970 and to which we did not make changes.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: That would depend on the circumstances in a given district. But the key in the district is that the Title I dollars would be genuinely supplemental.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Well, you’re saying that in order to do that, you’ve got to have the spending [for] Title I schools—including the teachers’ salaries—not less than the average combined state and local expenditures [for] the non-Title I schools. That’s comparability, that’s what we didn’t change.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Now again, here, because the focus is on “supplement, not supplant,” the question is whether or not the total local and state effort is at least equal to the non-Title I school. And a school can address a gap in effort through a variety of mechanisms. They can add advanced coursework, they can add a preschool program, they can take a number of strategies. It’s not saying the services need to be the same, its saying that the allocation of Title I dollars has to be supplemental.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Well, but you’re saying the total state and local effort for the non-Title I schools has to be the same [as] for the Title I schools, right?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Has to be at least equal to the average non-Title I school, which, again, could result in variety within a district.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Which, again, is comparability. I mean, that’s what comparability is. I sought to change it by introducing an amendment to do as Senator Burr suggested: allowing federal dollars to follow children from low-income families to the schools they attend. That was rejected. Senator Bennett had his amendment. The changes in the “supplement, not supplant” law are, to some extent—maybe a large extent—due to recommendations directly from the Center for American Progress, the Federal Education Law Group, and the American Enterprise Institute.</p>
<p>I’m going to read you a paragraph which they said, and I ask you to comment on it. They say:</p>
<p><em>It’s important that the proposed change, the one that was made, that we made in “supplement, not supplant,” would not look at whether the amount of state and local money a Title I school receives is equitable. Given the problems caused by the “supplement, not supplant” test, this issue should be addressed on its own, separate from other Title I fiscal issues. Concerns over equity can be addressed through Title I’s comparability requirement. </em></p>
<p>What would you say to that?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Here, I think part of what they’re referencing is the number of problems that we saw with the “supplement, not supplant” approach under No Child Left Behind—that, indeed, it was a burdensome process that did not achieve the desired goal of ensuring that Title I dollars are supplemental. We are not making a change to comparability; we are making a change to “supplement, not supplant” to reflect a change in law. “Supplement, not supplant” is different under ESSA, as you know, than under NCLB, and we were asked by a variety of stakeholders to provide clarity on implementation of “supplement, not supplant” under ESSA. And that’s what we proposed to the negotiated rule makers.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> What you proposed, then, must have the effect of equal spending by state and local dollars in Title I schools as well as non-Title I schools before you get the Title I money? Is that not correct?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: It does not require equal spending. It requires that the state and local funds in Title I schools are at least what is being spent in the average non-Title I school. So in a given district, you would still see variety in spending.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Yeah, well, that equalizes spending. Well, if you say you have to spend at least as much here as the average of here, that’s what we call equal spending, isn’t it?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: No, the decision to use the average of non-Title I spending would mean that there is a variety of spending levels in the non-Title I schools.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Section 1605 of the law says, “Nothing in this title should be construed to mandate equalized funding per pupil for a state and local educational agency or school.” What would you say to that?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Again, this wouldn’t equalize spending. What it would say is that in the Title I school, you have to spend at least as much of state and local resources that is spent in the average non-Title I school. There would be a range of spending within non-Title I schools, so you would not be requiring states to spend the same in all schools. But you would be ensuring that the Title I dollars are, in fact, supplemental and are not being used to backfill.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Well, there are plenty of ways to figure that out without equalizing spending. This sounds to me exactly like the kind of thing the department got into with academic standards in Common Core. You basically said that states didn’t have to adopt Common Core, but then you came up with requirements on standards that, in effect, required them all to do it. It produced an enormous backlash, which was a big part of passing this law.</p>
<p>So I would urge you to look carefully at this “supplement, not supplant” negotiated rule making proposal, which is in the early stage. Because in my view, it violates the unambiguous prohibitions that were in the law that the president signed in December related to prescribing state and local funding methodologies; mandating equalizing spending—you aren’t supposed to do that; interfering with state and local funding—you’re prohibited from doing that; or controlling the allocation of state and local resources.</p>
<p>It ignores Congress’s intent, which was to not change the law on comparability. It regulates outside the scope of the “supplement, not supplant” requirement. It would impose unprecedented burdens on state and local school districts, requiring an overhaul of almost all the state and local financial systems [and] giving districts few options other than to force the transfer of teachers to new schools, perhaps in direct conflict with collective bargaining contracts of teachers’ organizations. And it would require states to go back to the burdensome practice that we had before. As I mentioned earlier, according to the Great State City School Council, it would cost schools $3.9 billion just for the sixty-nine urban school districts to address state and local funding disparities; $9 million from the department alone.</p>
<p>I have only one other question: flexibility for eighth-grade students taking advanced math. One thing we heard more about than anything else in this reauthorization was about over-testing and the need for more flexibility in testing. We thought we provided that. Well, the new law permits a state to permit eighth-grade students to take an end-of-the-year test for passing the advanced math test in place of the eighth-grade math test. In other words, if you’re an eighth grader and you can take algebra II, you can take the algebra II test instead of the basic eighth-grade test. That just makes common sense, and in fact, the department’s waivers allowed that. Now you are proposing to add a new requirement—one that you apparently just made up—which says a state can be granted this flexibility only if it demonstrates that it offers all students in the state the opportunity to be prepared for and to take advanced mathematics coursework in middle school. I mean, where did that came from? That’s not in the law.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: Well this is being discussed by the negotiators. I think the key question here is, to the extent that opportunities are to be equitably provided to access advanced coursework. We know, for example, that there are high schools around the country serving large numbers of low-income students of color that don’t even offer algebra II or chemistry. We know that there are middle schools serving high numbers of low-income students of color that don’t even offer access to the algebra course.</p>
<p>So if you’re going to have an assessment system that provides comparable information about equitable access to opportunity in schools, you need to ensure that students have that opportunity. For a school to not offer students access to that advanced course means that you are using the assessment system to, in a sense, reify inequitable access.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Dr. King, if you would excuse me, if you were a United States Senator on the floor of the Senate, that would be a very good and persuasive argument. But you’re not. And we could have written that into the law, but we didn’t.</p>
<p>We basically said that a state may allow an eighth-grade student who’s taking an advanced math course to take the test for that advanced course and not have to take the state’s basic eighth-grade math test at the same time. Now you’ve come on and said, “Well, that’s an interesting idea. We also think it’d be good to make all the states and one hundred thousand public schools change the way they offer advanced math courses to include a lot more students.”</p>
<p>That may be a noble aspiration, but it’s not in the law. And for adding this requirement to money that constitutes about 4 percent of all the money that state and local governments spend on one hundred thousand public schools. Those decisions ought to be left to the elected officials, not to the people in your department.</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: You can’t get comparable, valid, reliable information about student performance if the assessment is only available to some students and not to others. So the goal here is to ensure that the assessment system provides comparable information.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> But you’re not in charge of the accountability system. In fact, what the law requires is that the result of those tests be a part of the state’s accountability system. But what we’re trying to get rid of is you here telling states what to do with the results of tests. It must have made common sense to say if you’re an eighth-grade student taking an advanced math course that you can take the test for that course and that you don’t have to also take the basic eighth-grade test—period. I mean, the department allowed states to do that in the waiver. Why are you making this up now?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: In the design of the accountability system, yes, there is state flexibility around accountability systems, but the states are to generate comparable information about the performance of students within any given grade. </p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Who’s going to decide that? Are you going to decide that?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: States would decide how that would work in their districts</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Well, why not let them decide that?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: We are.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> No, you’ve said in your proposed rule—and I won’t belabor it any further, I hope you’ll go back and take a look at this. I mean, you’ve basically put in a new requirement, that you can only take the flexibility Congress gave if you do what the department now wants to legislate— demonstrate that you offer the opportunity for all students in the state to be prepared for and take advanced mathematic coursework in middle school. It’s kind of hard to know what that would mean anyway.</p>
<p>You were asked by one of the senators, “Do you have anything else to tell us?” You sent proposed regulations to the Office of Management and Budget last week on accountability systems, state plans, innovative assessment pilot. When are you going to make details of those proposals public, what’s your intended timeline for final regulations, and what can you tell us about other areas of the law that you intend to issue guidance on or offer technical assistance?</p>
<p><strong>Dr. King</strong>: So, the accountability regulations are now with OMB for review. We expect later this spring, early summer, those comments will be posted for comment. We will later develop regulations based on the input we’ve received from stakeholders on state plans, on the innovative assessment pilot. We expect those regulations to be out for public comment in the fall.</p>
<p>The goal is to have all the regulations in place by the end of the year so states are in a position to develop plans in spring and summer of next year—submit those plans in spring and summer of next year—so that they are ready for full implementation in September 2017.</p>
<p>We’ve also committed to develop guidance on services for homeless students, foster care students, and English learners. But we’re continuing to gather feedback and input from stakeholders and will potentially develop additional guidance documents based on what states, districts, educators, parents, civil rights organizations are telling us they need in order to ensure clarity and have examples of best practices.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Alexander:</strong> Thank you, Dr. King. I hope you’ll reflect on this hearing today. We have many different opinions on this committee, and we were able to come to a law. And each of us can speak for ourselves, but for me, I think it is very clear that we did not intend that you come up with some clever way to use one provision, the “supplement, not supplant” provision, to change another provision, the comparability provision, that we deliberately did not change because we couldn’t agree on how to change it. We left the law exactly how it was.</p>
<p>I hope you’ll take another look at that. Your responsibility is to faithfully execute the law and abide by the letter of the law, and I don’t think the beginning of those rule proposals suggest that some of the employees are doing [that]. So we’ll look forward to following the implementation for the law carefully during the rest of the year.</p>
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</ul>Wed, 13 Apr 2016 21:30:13 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59465 at https://edexcellence.netDraft ESSA regulations: A mixed bag for educational excellencehttps://edexcellence.net/articles/draft-essa-regulations-a-mixed-bag-for-educational-excellence
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Draft ESSA regulations: A mixed bag for educational excellence</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/draft-essa-regulations-mixed-bag-plucker-wright.jpg?itok=BalRJo4K" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/jonathan-plucker-phd">Jonathan Plucker, Ph.D.</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/brandon-l-wright">Brandon L. Wright</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">April 11, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires a “<a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/03/ed_dept_picks_essa_negotiators.html">negotiated rulemaking</a>” process whenever the Department of Education issues regulations under parts of the law pertaining to assessments, academic standards, and several other topics. This process requires a <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/03/ed_dept_picks_essa_negotiators.html">panel of experts</a>, which the agency assembled in March. Their work thus far (they’ve met twice) has revealed <em>major</em> problems on the regulatory front concerning gifted and high-achieving students. These issues need immediate attention, including close scrutiny by the lawmakers who crafted ESSA.</p>
<p>As <em><a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/03/ed_dept_picks_essa_negotiators.html">Education Week</a></em> explains the process, panel members “essentially get together in a room and try to hammer out an agreement with the department. If the process fails, which it often does, the feds go back to the drawing board and negotiate through the regular process, which involves releasing a draft rule, getting comments on it, and then putting out a final rule.” The Department of Education assists this process with <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/Issue%20Paper%201--Computer%20adaptive%20testing%202016.04.01.pdf">issues papers</a> (which provide background), discussion questions, and draft regulatory language that the panel can edit based on its discussions.</p>
<p>Last week, the group tackled assessments, an area of ESSA that directly affects gifted and high-achieving students. Unfortunately, in the twenty-plus pages of draft regulations and seven issue papers that accompanied those discussions, the team never addresses gifted education (aside from one mention of “<a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/Issue%20Paper%201--Computer%20adaptive%20testing%202016.04.01.pdf">above-grade-level</a>” testing). That’s a huge shame considering that many of the regs will affect high-achievers for years to come.</p>
<p>Of the seven issues the panel dealt with, three are of particular interest to advanced students: computer-adaptive testing; advanced math assessments for eighth graders; and locally selected high school assessments. Here we explain what each could mean for high-achieving students, as well as the problems we see ahead as states seek to promote educational excellence and shrink achievement gaps under these regulations.</p>
<p><strong>Computer-adaptive testing</strong></p>
<p>Before ESSA, a No Child Left Behind provision required all students to take the same tests. As it was interpreted by both the Bush and Obama administrations, the provision also barred material from those tests that was significantly above or below grade level. As a consequence, most current assessments do a lousy job of measuring academic growth by pupils who are well above grade level. They just don’t contain enough “hard” questions to allow reliable measurement of achievement growth at the high end. In other words, the ceiling on those tests is so low that most advanced students can pass them even before the school year starts.</p>
<p>Thankfully, ESSA allows computer-adaptive tests (CATs)—such as those developed by the Smarter Balanced consortium—to be structured and administered in ways that measure growth at every level, without overburdening any student with a ridiculously long paper-and-pencil test. And if combined with a real academic growth accountability model—one that holds schools to account for ensuring that all their students make progress over the course of the school year—this can finally create incentives for schools to attend to the further learning of their high-achievers. Making sure that every state allows for above-grade-level testing is critically important as we implement ESSA.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the CAT issue paper and draft regulations prepared by the Department of Education do little to encourage any of this. In fact, they make it harder than ESSA’s drafters intended by mandating that any test selected by a state “must measure a student’s academic proficiency based on the challenging State academic standards <em>for the grade in which the student is enrolled</em>” (emphasis added). Moreover, when the draft regs list all nine of the subgroups for which scores must be disaggregated, students “at each level of achievement” are <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/Draft%20updated%20full%20assessment%20regs_2016_0401_for%20posting.pdf">problematically omitted</a>—even though they’re among the subgroups <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1177/text">ESSA requires states to include on their annual school report cards</a>. In other words, the department has not moved away from its single-minded fixation on grade-level testing.</p>
<p>Yet it makes no sense for a ten-year-old kid who is already reading or doing math at the seventh-grade level to take a test with questions designed for fourth graders. We can understand the logic of making below-grade-level students take on-grade level questions, so as not to lower expectations for them. But why do the same for above-grade-level students? This can only give their schools further reason to continue neglecting them.</p>
<p>And put yourself in the shoes of a teacher with a fourth grader who is advanced in math. You know before she even takes the test that she’s above grade level, so data confirming that is a waste of both your and the student’s time. (Hello, opt-out parents!) But knowing that this student is learning at the sixth-grade level according to your state standards would provide you with a good foundation for helping that student continue to grow in math.</p>
<p>The Education Department’s obvious indifference to these issues is truly worrying—a significant shortcoming in the regulatory process that the panel and the department both ought to remedy before this process goes farther.</p>
<p><strong>Advanced math assessments for eighth graders</strong></p>
<p>Under ESSA, states must administer the same math and ELA assessments to all students in grades 3–8. But the law makes an exception for eighth-grade students taking advanced math coursework. According to the new draft regulations interpreting that provision of ESSA, states could measure these kids’ academic achievement using the end-of-year math assessment the state gives it high school students.</p>
<p>At first glance, this flexibility looks like good news for high-achievers—especially in states that don’t assess above-grade-level content using computer-adaptive tests. But last week, the panel added a further provision to the draft regs that could make it very difficult for states to take advantage of these exemptions. The panel would require any such state to demonstrate that it “offers all students in the State the opportunity to be prepared for and to take advanced mathematics coursework in middle school.”</p>
<p>The provision sounds both onerous and mysterious. Advanced coursework is, by definition, meant for students achieving at a higher level than most of their peers. How, then, could a state demonstrate that it offers all students the opportunity to be prepared for such coursework? And would a state, under this provision, have to offer advanced math to all students, regardless of their preparation? It’s the type of pie-in-the-sky regulation that might rip a hole in an otherwise beneficial policy. And every advocate and policy maker who cares even a little about these kids ought to shout from the mountaintops about how crazy this is and get it changed before the regulations are final.</p>
<p><strong>Locally selected high school assessments</strong></p>
<p>This provision of ESSA allows districts to use “nationally recognized” tests for the high school assessments that the law mandates. The regs define a “Nationally recognized high school academic assessment” as “an assessment of student knowledge and skills of high school students that is administered in multiple States and used by institutions of higher education in those States for the purposes of entrance into post-secondary education or training programs.” That’s how policy people say, “Your district can use the SAT or ACT as a high school test, even if your state uses a different assessment, under certain conditions.”</p>
<p>Unlike the two provisions discussed above, this one looks like a good development for advanced students. These tests have relatively high ceilings, which will provide evidence about the performance of our best high school students (and, more importantly, allow for those data to be used in state accountability systems). And most advanced students will take these tests anyway, so a district pursuing this option would presumably lessen their testing burden.</p>
<p><strong>A mixed bag</strong></p>
<p>The authors of ESSA intended for gifted kids to be better served by American schools than they have been to this point, at least insofar as federal policy bears on their education. The shift toward decentralized decisions will allow states to boost their own policy guidelines if they choose—as we hope they will—to address excellence gaps.</p>
<p>But the way the department and its hand-picked negotiators are handling these issues in the draft regulations and issue papers strongly suggests that gifted education—and, more broadly, educational excellence—remains almost completely off its radar. Of the three ESSA provisions that matter most for high-achievers, the regulators are doing OK with locally selected high school assessments. But they're really messing up computer-adaptive tests and advanced eighth-grade math assessments—to the extent that they stand to actively harm high-achievers. Fortunately, this is just one step in the regulatory process, so we don’t have to wave the white flag yet. Advocates and policy makers still have time to get the word out and change these provisions before they’re finalized. That is exactly what we hope to do.</p>
<p><em>Jonathan Plucker is the inaugural Julian C. Stanley Professor of Talent Development at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the National Association for Gifted Children board of directors. Brandon Wright is the editorial director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.</em></p>
<p><em>Editor's note: This is part of a series of blog posts that is collaboratively published every week by the National Association for Gifted Children and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Each post in the series exists both here on Flypaper and on the <a href="http://www.nagc.org/blog">NAGC Blog</a>.</em></p>
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</ul>Mon, 11 Apr 2016 20:31:01 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59453 at https://edexcellence.netIf Republican legislatures drown in Trump's wake, so might education reformhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/if-republican-legislatures-drown-in-trumps-wake-so-might-education-reform
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>If Republican legislatures drown in Trump&#039;s wake, so might education reform</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/if-republicans-drown-so-might-education-reform-finn.jpg?itok=netN33Yl" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/chester-e-finn-jr">Chester E. Finn, Jr.</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">April 06, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Policy wonks and political prognosticators have begun to forecast the collateral damage that is apt to follow if Donald Trump manages—in spite of himself, and notwithstanding his Wisconsin setback—to win the Republican nomination, damaging not only GOP prospects for <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/02/donald_trump_would_very_likely_lose_to_hillary_clinton.html">retrieving the White House</a> but also the party’s odds of prevailing in <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/trump-gop-house-majority-jeopardy-221004">innumerable races for Congress</a> and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/20/politics/democrats-donald-trump-governors/">for state (and even local) leadership</a>. Following in the wake of those generally dire prognostications are early conjectures about the policy shifts that may ensue in sundry realms both international and domestic if Democrats are positioned to chart the future course.</p>
<p>For education reformers parsing this prospect, it’s useful first to recall the many worthy changes that followed the GOP’s 2010 sweep of a galaxy of state and federal offices (obviously omitting the one that’s ovular). Though nothing in the list below is (from my perspective) perfect, it’s hard to picture many—perhaps any—of these things happening had Republicans not been in positions of influence:</p>
<ul><li>New assessments in most states, geared to higher academic standards and featuring higher “cut scores” that correspond more accurately and honestly to the actual demands of college, career, and international competitiveness</li>
<li>Accelerating the spread of school choice, both the public version (typically charter schools) and the private kind (including vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, and education savings accounts)</li>
<li>Multiple experiments with nontraditional forms of education governance, such as “recovery districts” </li>
<li>Serious efforts in many states and communities to implement forthright evaluations of teacher and administrator performance, often linked to student learning gains</li>
<li>Newfound attention in some places to the educational needs of high-ability learners—and also to high-quality career and technical education</li>
<li>The (overdue) overhaul of No Child Left Behind in the direction of re-empowering states and curbing federal heavy-handedness</li>
</ul><p>To be sure: Some of these changes were brought about through bipartisan effort, some were spearheaded by Democrats, and some were accelerated by Race to the Top. But I invite anyone to demonstrate that most of these reforms would have happened in most of these places <a href="http://educationnext.org/obama%E2%80%99s-education-record/">were not GOP lawmakers a force to be reckoned with</a>.</p>
<p>As we force ourselves to contemplate the likelihood that November 2016 may usher in widespread erosion in the ranks of Republican policy makers, what might we anticipate on the education reform front? Keep in mind that the Supreme Court majority is already up for grabs; that far more Republican senators are vulnerable in this cycle than Democrats; that GOP influence is shaky in such traditionally blue states as Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois; that “purple” states like Colorado are always iffy; and that Democrats in some jurisdictions (Wisconsin comes swiftly to mind) are almost literally itching to undo key changes that recent years have wrought.</p>
<p>The good news for reformers, if there is any, is that the kinds of changes that bring actual, tangible benefit to thousands of families are hard to undo (though their growth may be curbed and their operations slowly impeded). In the realm of school choice, for example, it seems all but impossible that extant charter schools and private school choice programs will be abolished. Witness the inability of Mayor de Blasio to reverse New York City’s vibrant charter school movement, even in mostly blue Albany. Thank you, Eva Moskowitz—a Democrat! Witness, too, the enactment of a new charter law in deep blue Washington State, lest actual schools be shut in the aftermath of that state’s judicial dismantling of the first such statute.</p>
<p>Far more vulnerable to undermining or repeal are the reforms that bring little direct, palpable, short-term benefit to a constituency of parents and children—things like school and educator accountability and standards, alternative certification, and kindred efforts to weaken the hegemony of education schools and traditional licensure practices. The public cannot readily see what difference these things make, and they’re thoroughly unloved by most educators, their unions, and the rest of the old “establishment.” Accordingly, efforts to weaken, defer, or do away with such measures won’t provoke many big marches on the statehouse. (On the other hand, such efforts won’t draw much public enthusiasm, either.)</p>
<p>Also vulnerable are reformers’ efforts to curb the power and influence of public-sector unions, whether through legislation or litigation. This is especially worth noting because a likely consequence of a liberal-majority Supreme Court will be new curbs on the influence of business and wealthy individuals when it comes to campaign contributions. Indeed, today’s deadlocked court failed just last month to overturn the <em>Friedrichs</em> decision, a serious blow to reformers in and beyond California who were striving to liberate teachers from mandatory contributions to their unions’ organizing activities.</p>
<p>The various bureaucracies that have long dominated the operations of K–12 education at every level will be re-empowered—and their capacity for regulatory heavy-handedness enhanced—whether in the realm of special education, textbook approval, or school discipline, and the individuals placed in leadership roles in those bureaucracies are more likely to be plucked from establishment ranks. That’s also likely to happen in new-style bureaucracies (such as recovery districts) that are ultimately answerable to elected officials; this could gradually result in cramped, overregulated charter schools and other choice programs. The diminished capacity of GOP lawmakers (in Congress and state legislatures alike) to ride herd on bureaucratic excesses will embolden those in authority to give freer rein to their own predilections and to the preferences of those they view as constituents. Those constituents, in turn, are more likely to be the “producers” of education and less apt to be “consumers.” Even where Republicans retain majorities, the disarray and infighting within the GOP will dampen their ability to get anything done and distract them from such causes as revitalizing the schools of their states and cities. We can expect Democrats to spend more on education, yes, but more of it will go to the education system’s innumerable first-, second-, and third-order hangers on—vendors, employees, factions, interest groups, and activist clusters. Which means the interests of children, parents, and taxpayers will be given less heed and fewer resources.</p>
<p>Thanks a whole bunch, Donald Trump. </p>
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</ul>Wed, 06 Apr 2016 18:08:59 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59440 at https://edexcellence.netESSA accountability: Don't forget the high-achievershttps://edexcellence.net/articles/essa-accountability-dont-forget-the-high-achievers
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>ESSA accountability: Don&#039;t forget the high-achievers</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/essa-accountability-encourage-progress-high-achievers.jpg?itok=1B5Ftdcw" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/michael-j-petrilli">Michael J. Petrilli</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 28, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Way back in the early days of the accountability movement, Jeb Bush’s Florida developed an innovative approach to evaluating school quality. First, the state looked at individual student progress over time—making it one of the first to do so. Then it put special emphasis on the gains (or lack thereof) of the lowest-performing kids in the state.</p>
<p>Many of us were fans of this approach, including the focus on low-achievers. It was an elegant way to highlight the performance of the children who were most at risk of being “left behind,” without resorting to an explicitly race-based approach like No Child Left Behind’s. </p>
<p>Chad Aldeman of Bellwether Education Partners recently <a href="http://educationnext.org/how-should-states-design-school-rating-systems-a-conversation-with-an-expert/">interview</a>ed one of the designers of the Florida system, Christy Hovanetz, who elaborates:</p>
<p><em>By focusing on the lowest-performing students, we want to create a system that truly focuses on students who need the most help and is equitable across all schools. We strongly support the focus on the lowest-performing students, no matter what group they come from.</em></p>
<p><em>That does a number of things. It reduces the number of components…within the accountability system and places the focus on students who truly need the most help….It also reduces the need for small n-sizes. If you’re looking at the lowest-performing students in any given school, it’s a larger n-size than a lot of the race or curricular subgroups.</em></p>
<p>I still understand the impulse, but I’ve come to see this approach as a big mistake. That’s because it signals to schools that their low-achievers should be a higher priority than their high-achievers. And in a high-poverty school especially—where everybody is poor—that has the unintended consequence of hurting high-achieving, low-income students.</p>
<p>As I write in my new book<em>, Education for Upward Mobility</em>, these strivers deserve to be top priorities too. They are the low-income students with the best shot at using a great education to reach the middle class; to succeed in advanced courses in middle school and the AP program in high school; and to make it to and through four-year universities, including elite ones.</p>
<p>Yet too often their needs are an afterthought. In 2008, we at Fordham asked teachers whether they prioritized the low-achievers or high-achievers in their classrooms. <a href="http://edexcellence.net/publications/high-achieving-students-in.html">It wasn’t even close</a>.<img alt="" data-fid="115814" data-media-element="1" height="839" src="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pie%20chart_0.jpg" style="line-height: 1.538em;" typeof="foaf:Image" width="1166" /></p>
<p>That was back when NCLB was placing pressure on schools to get low-performing students over a modest “proficiency” bar—even while tacitly encouraging them to ignore the educational needs of their high-achievers, who were likely to pass state tests regardless of what their schools did for them. This may be why the U.S. has seen significant achievement growth for its lowest-performing students over the last twenty years (especially in fourth and eighth grades, and particularly in math), but minimal gains for its top students.</p>
<p>Thankfully, under the Every Student Succeeds Act, states now have the opportunity—and face the challenge—of designing school rating systems that can vastly improve upon the model required by NCLB. And one of the most important improvements they can make is to ensure that their accountability systems encourage schools to pay attention to <em>all</em> students, including their strivers.</p>
<p>In my view, state rating systems need to contain four crucial elements—all allowable under ESSA—if their high-achievers are again to matter to their schools:</p>
<ol><li><strong>For the first academic indicator required by ESSA (“academic achievement”), give schools extra credit for achievement at the “advanced” level</strong>. Under ESSA, states will continue to measure the performance of students who attain proficiency on state tests. They should also give schools extra credit for getting students to the advanced level (such as level four on Smarter Balanced or level five on PARCC).</li>
<li><strong>For the second academic indicator expected by ESSA (student growth), grade schools using a true growth model that looks at the progress of students at all achievement levels, not just those who are low-performing or below the “proficient” line</strong>. Florida is not alone. Regrettably, many states still don’t consider student growth; alternatively, they may use a “growth to proficiency” system, which continues to encourage schools to ignore the needs of students above (or far above) the proficient level. Using a “value-added” or “growth percentile” method for all students is much preferred.</li>
<li><strong>When determining summative school grades, or ratings, make growth—across the achievement spectrum—count the most</strong>. ESSA expects states to combine multiple factors into school grades, probably through an index. Each of the three academic indicators (achievement, growth, and progress toward English proficiency) must carry “substantial” weight. But in my view, states should (and under ESSA, they are free to) make growth matter the most. Otherwise, schools will continue to face an incentive to ignore their high-performers.</li>
<li><strong>Include “gifted students” (or “high achieving students”) as a subgroup in the state’s accountability system, and report results for them separately</strong>. Finally, states can signal that high-achievers matter by making them a visible, trackable “subgroup,” akin to special education students or English language learners, and publishing school grades for their progress and/or achievement. (Obviously, it makes little sense to report that high achievers are…high achieving. But whether they are making strong growth is quite relevant. Alternatively, states might publish results for students labeled as “gifted,” though that opens up a can of worms about how those labels are applied.) To my knowledge, Ohio is the only state that currently does this.</li>
</ol><p>What states should certainly <em>not</em> do is focus on the progress of just one group of students. All kids—and particularly all kids from disadvantaged backgrounds—deserve the best we can give them. Let’s not tell their schools otherwise.</p>
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</ul>Mon, 28 Mar 2016 21:00:26 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59402 at https://edexcellence.netEducation Secretary Ben Carsonhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/education-secretary-ben-carson
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Education Secretary Ben Carson</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 16, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><ul><li>Merryl Tisch, who is stepping down as chancellor of New York’s Board of Regents, gave <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/11/nyregion/merryl-tisch-board-of-regents-chief-who-set-off-testing-backlash-reflects-on-her-tenure.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Feducation&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=education&amp;region=rank&amp;module=package&amp;version=highlights&amp;contentPlacement=5&amp;pgtype=sectionfront">a valedictory interview</a> to the <em>New York Times</em> last week. As head of one of the foremost educational authorities in the state, she will principally be remembered for championing and helping implement the Common Core State Standards and a new teacher evaluation system alongside New York State Education Commissioner John King (<a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-14/john-king-confirmed-as-education-secretary">confirmed Monday as secretary of education</a>). Her efforts led to some necessary improvements in curriculum and instruction across the state, but they didn’t come without a backlash: Roughly one-fifth of all eligible students were kept out of the new tests by their parents last spring, and unions revolted over the Regents’ recommendation to link teacher evaluations to student scores. Now, with Governor Andrew Cuomo <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/governor-cuomos-task-force-looks-to-bury-higher-standards">backing slowly away</a> from that notion and <a href="http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2016/03/8593053/new-regents-chancellor-would-bring-significant-change">an opt-out favorite</a> in line to replace Tisch as chancellor, the movement for high standards looks like it’s undergoing a reset in the Empire State. It’s up to both local leaders and national reformers to make sure that new players don’t change matters for the worse.</li>
<li>You may be wondering why, after many months and approximately eight thousand primary debates full of nasty invective, Ben Carson <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/03/10/ben-carson-plans-to-endorse-trump/">decided to back former rival Donald Trump</a> last week. After all, most conservatives have either explicitly denounced the orange menace or sat out the contest entirely. Well, as Carson explains it, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/ben-carson-endorses-donald-trump-220629">there are actually two Donald Trumps</a>: One’s the guy who <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/trump-carson-pathological-like-child-molester.html">calls you a lying pedophile</a>, and the other is a sweetie pie who <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/15/3760261/carson-offered-position-by-trump/">trades endorsements for future jobs</a>. Although the retired neurosurgeon didn’t spill too many details about the almost certainly felonious arrangement, it’s speculated by some that Trump could have him in mind for education secretary (especially given <a href="http://theweek.com/speedreads/612056/donald-trump-promised-education-secretary-ben-carson">his comments at the end of last week</a>). But that would be kind of a tough job to come by in a Trump administration, since <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-epa-education_us_56240035e4b02f6a900cc0e7">he’s already vowed to abolish the Education Department</a>. Maybe he thinks Carson would literally just be his very well-educated secretary?</li>
<li>Though it may sometimes seem that way, not all presidential news is attributable to the mephitic emissions of a certain oft-insolvent developer. Sometimes Bernie Sanders also says things. Or doesn’t <em>quite</em> say anything coherent, like at Sunday night’s Democratic town hall. Asked by Columbus, Ohio KIPP administrator Caitlynn Dunn whether he supports charter schools, the Vermont senator <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/yet-more-confusing-charter-school-talk-from-bernie-sanders-what-is-a-private-charter-anyway">burbled out a response</a> that sounded like nothing so much as the gibbering of a man who cannot recall the words of a very boring limerick. In a happy twist, his questioner was actually quoting <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/03/10/study-6-columbus-public-and-charter-schools-shine-but-most-in-ohios-big-cities-fail.html">a <em>Columbus Dispatch</em> article that reported the charter-related findings</a> of Fordham’s own Aaron Churchill. From our mouths to Bernie’s ears—there has to be a first time for everything, I guess.</li>
<li>Now that Washington lawmakers have finally gotten around to updating the cobwebbed No Child Left Behind Act, state education authorities are expected to revise their accountability measures to comply with the new law. Right now, that means rushing to approve changes ahead of the Department of Education, which is still determining how it will interpret and enforce the will of Congress. <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/03/16/states-rush-to-retool-accountability-following-essa.html">According to <em>Education Week</em></a>, some of the plans being batted about in places like California, Arizona, and Florida might skirt the line of what is, strictly speaking, legal. (The last state, for instance, proposes to give districts the option of administering multiple assessments in grades 3–8; that’s in direct contradiction to ESSA, which mandates the use of a single test.) We leave it up to the lawyers to determine that, which should make for a fun couple of decades. In the meantime, if any state board members or school chiefs are hoping to steal good ideas for accountability, they’ve got an invaluable resource at their disposal: Fordham’s own ESSA Accountability Design proposals, unveiled <a href="http://edexcellence.net/commentary/videos/essa-accountability-design-competition">at our blockbuster event</a> last month. Because after all, why tear your hair out trying to fine-tune school ratings when you can just get Morgan Polikoff to do it for you?</li>
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</ul>Wed, 16 Mar 2016 19:39:02 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59370 at https://edexcellence.netLefties against John Kinghttps://edexcellence.net/articles/lefties-against-john-king
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Lefties against John King</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 09, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><strong>Opinions differed on the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act,</strong> as they do with just about any piece of important legislation. But one thing that all sides agreed on was that the bill clearly signified <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/06/essa-reins-in-reshapes-federal-role-in.html">a shift of control away from the federal government</a> and toward the states. Some commentators <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/opinion/why-the-new-education-law-is-good-for-children-left-behind.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=0">celebrated the move</a> away from distant, centralized power, while others <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/opinion/why-the-new-education-law-is-good-for-children-left-behind.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=0">fretted about the consequences for accountability</a>—but the gist was pretty much the same. Now that we’ve entered the implementation phase, however, some are calling for a takeback. A coalition of over fifty civil rights organizations <a href="http://www.civilrights.org/press/2016/ESSA-Oversight-Letter.html?referrer=http://www.civilrights.org/press/2016/ESSA-Oversight-Letter.html?referrer=http://www.civilrights.org/press/2016/ESSA-Oversight-Letter.html">has signed a letter to Acting Secretary of Education John King</a> urging his department to provide clear direction to the states for carrying out the law. The group—which includes the ACLU, the NAACP, the Human Rights Campaign, and Teach For America—recommends strong steps to guarantee equitable educational opportunities for English language learners, foster children, disabled students, and other disadvantaged populations. Whether they prevail will probably hinge on the amount of federal oversight states (and Republicans on Capitol Hill) are willing to tolerate after fifteen years of the No Child Left Behind precedent. History suggests that it won’t be much.</p>
<p><strong>That’s not the only open letter Acting Secretary King will have on his mind this week. </strong>While the Senate education committee <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/03/09/senate-committee-votes-to-confirm-john-king-obamas-nominee-for-education-secretary/">met today to approve his nomination for education secretary</a>, members <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2016/03/acting_us_secretary_john_b.html">have received a written plea from liberal activists</a> to torpedo his candidacy. The letter was reportedly drafted by author Nikhil Goyal (<a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/09/05/american-education-system-nikhil-goyal/#5d3a1dfb4987">a person who is twenty years old</a>), though “with the help of” eager chaperone and Common Core foe Carol Burris; signatories include waning campus eccentric Noam Chomsky and luminaries like the Badass Teachers Association. The text reproduces most of the brochure boilerplate associated with the opt-out movement, pillorying King for being a tool of nasty-wasty testing corporations. After the committee heeds their warning and votes King down, they’ll be free to formally eliminate homework and establish the Department of <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/finlands-joyful-illiterate-kindergarteners">Joyful Illiteracy</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Years of experience have taught us that it’s not enough to just get kids to college;</strong> we’ve got to push them through as well. That’s because there’s no worse scenario than being saddled with loans intended to pay for a degree that was never fully attained. But educators in California are now arguing that we should look at things differently. <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/04/california-community-colleges-find-new-way-measure-success-noncompleters?utm_content=bufferf74bb&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=IHEbuffer">A recent study of the state’s community college system</a>, which closely tracked students who left without any kind of credential, seems to indicate that not all non-completers should be viewed as evidence of institutional failure. Researchers claim that many students intentionally attend just one or two CTE-centric courses, mostly in disciplines like IT and child development, as a means of acquiring professional aptitude and winning promotions. They dub these folks “skills builders,” and even though there’s something a little fishy about slapping a euphemistic name on the category (“He’s not an arsonist, he’s a bonfire enthusiast!”), the data paint a happy picture. According to information from California’s Employment Development Department, skills builders ended up earning a median wage bump of 13.6 percent—or nearly $5,000—after completing at least one CTE course. That’s impressive, and certainly something to think about as states consider holding colleges (and high schools) accountable for college completion.</p>
<p><strong>Ah, to be seventeen again.</strong> What wouldn’t you give to roam the halls of your high school as a callow, idealistic youth? You could hang in with the JV cross country team, take a shot at your long-ago homeroom crush, and loudly tell off the class bully. And by God, you could take the watered-down SAT that today’s lucky kids are given, at last earning the perfect score you’ve always deserved! The ritually loathed test, bane of generations of slacker twerps, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/07/health/new-sat-test-student-reaction/index.html">was subject to some radical changes this year</a>: The vocabulary section was swept aside, the essay portion made optional, and the math problems updated to better reflect college-level expectations. According to Kaplan’s poll of students who’d recently sat for the exam, 72 percent said that it either “somewhat” or “very much” reflected the material they’d learned in class, while 70 percent said that it was either as difficult as they’d expected or somewhat less so. And no wonder! They’re no longer responsible for knowing the definition of the word “mollycoddled.”</p>
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</ul>Wed, 09 Mar 2016 17:52:03 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59349 at https://edexcellence.netBill and Eva tussle over pre-Khttps://edexcellence.net/articles/bill-and-eva-tussle-over-pre-k
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Bill and Eva tussle over pre-K</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 02, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><ul><li>On the day when America’s schooling woes have finally ceased—when all of its children are guaranteed equal access to qualified teachers, enriching curricula, secure facilities, and reliable pathways to higher education and the workforce—Bill de Blasio and Eva Moskowitz will have to find something new to fight about. Maybe their respective choices for the finest Ninja Turtle, or whether <em>Led Zeppelin II</em> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3HemKGDavw">rocks harder</a> than <em>Houses of the Holy</em>. Until that distant time, they can keep up their reassuringly constant tit-for-tat over Success Academy’s place in the New York City education system. This week, de Blasio has found himself disinvited from Eva’s prom afterparty <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/nyregion/success-academy-loses-in-pre-k-battle-with-de-blasio-administration.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=0">for insisting that the charter network sign a contract</a> (and therefore accept some form of municipal oversight) to receive payment for its participation in the city’s universal pre-K initiative. Seeking over $700,000 in reimbursement monies, and evidently concerned with being micromanaged by its archenemy, Success Academy appealed to the state education commissioner. The commish swiftly ruled against them, surprising few. This beef perfectly illustrates the challenges of extending pre-K funds to charters, which Fordham chronicled extensively in <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/fordham-prek_and_charters-complete_rev1_0.pdf">our report last year</a>. Normally, the barriers to participation include low funding levels or district monopolies on resources. In this instance, of course, cooperation has been stymied by the two parties’ desperately suppressed crush on one another.</li>
<li>Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, if not before, the conversation around accountability has often gravitated toward the disputatious point of school closure. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/School%20Closures%20and%20Student%20Achievement%20Report%20website%20final.pdf">Recent research from Fordham</a> has established that closing poorly performing schools is often the right move for students, but distributing pupils to other institutions can lead to immense disillusionment in the community. The <em>New York Times</em> captures the tension in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/us/poor-scores-leave-an-afrocentric-school-in-chicago-vulnerable.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;_r=0">its coverage of an Afrocentric charter school in Chicago</a> whose miserable test scores are likely to doom it. Its organizing model—a vestige of ‘60s-era Black Power precepts—emphasizes pride in black identity and accomplishments, an element prized by students, parents, and alumni. Indeed, Fordham’s own Audrey Kim <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/a-culturally-rich-curriculum-can-improve-minority-student-achievement">has explored the value of a multicultural classroom focus</a>, which can better engage students from diverse backgrounds. Such practices have to potential to improve lives, but only when wed to genuine, measurable academic achievement.</li>
<li>The Every Student Succeeds Act mandates that the performance of schools <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/06/essa-law-broadens-definition-of-school-success.html">must be judged on a multitude of factors</a>, not all of them strictly academic. Now <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/how-should-states-measure-school-success">states must decide</a> which aspects, other than test scores, they wish to measure when determining educational success: Absenteeism or school climate? Discipline or student engagement? In California, a handful of districts are attempting to assess progress in non-cognitive skills like joy, zest, and determination. It’s an approach that has gained steam in recent years as <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/513f79f9e4b05ce7b70e9673/t/52e9d8e6e4b001f5c1f6c27d/1391057126694/meta-analysis-child-development.pdf">experts have pointed to the importance</a> of “social and emotional learning”—the kind of character development that helps kids buckle down, relish challenges, and bounce back from disappointment. Notably, some of the figures most closely tied to the idea, such as Macarthur Fellow Angela Duckworth, have disavowed the idea of subjecting such airy qualities to even the scrutiny of self-reported surveys (especially if stakes are attached). But there are some reasonably practical ways of going about it: Whenever I want to measure my own self-control, for instance, I just tabulate the number of stories like this I can get through without chuckling ruefully.</li>
<li>There tends to be a lot of hype in the education world. Anything that could potentially spice up the old formula of teacher + student + blackboard + homework holds immense interest for educators, the entrepreneurs who often fund them, and the education writers who cover the whole mess. Maybe that’s why there’s been so much chatter around Altschool, a network of “microschools” launched by Google veteran Max Ventilla. The group has already garnered attention from the <em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/nyregion/in-the-spirit-of-mark-zuckerberg-an-experimental-school-in-brooklyn.html?em_pos=large&amp;emc=edit_ur_20151206&amp;nl=nytoday&amp;nlid=8606063&amp;_r=0">New York Times</a></em>, <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/05/07/404859293/altschool-promises-to-reimagine-education-for-the-2030s">NPR</a>, and <em><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/27/micro-schools-could-be-new-competition-for.html">Education Week</a></em> (even the Gadfly threw in its two cents <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/the-backlash-to-the-backlash">last month</a>). But this week’s <em>New Yorker </em>delivers <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/07/altschools-disrupted-education">the most comprehensive look yet</a> at a totally novel school model that’s expanding rapidly around the country. Administered totally by teachers and serving very few students, six Altschool locations have already sprung up in San Francisco and New York City, with the hope of reaching double digits by next year. The story is rich with disruptive bro shibboleths (“We encourage staff members to express their pain points, step up with their ideas, take a risk, fail forward, and fail fast, because we know we are going to iterate quickly. Other schools tend to move in geologic time.”), and it’s easy to detect a whiff of skepticism throughout. But underneath the Silicon Valley argle bargle, there’s a story here about technology, innovation, and choice that edu-observers all need to read. <em>Washington Monthly</em>’s Alexander Russo also has <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/the-grade/2016/03/in_praise_of_the_new_yorkers_a059789.php">a great take</a> on the piece.</li>
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</ul>Wed, 02 Mar 2016 21:05:58 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59330 at https://edexcellence.netUsing ESSA to fix reading: Implications for state policyhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/using-essa-to-fix-reading-implications-for-state-policy
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Using ESSA to fix reading: Implications for state policy</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-reading.jpg?itok=Vl28jWJE" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/robert-pondiscio">Robert Pondiscio</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-ext-author-name field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lisa Hansel</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 02, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/how-to-fix-reading-in-the-era-of-essa">Last week</a>, we encouraged state policy makers and educators to rethink what it takes to develop strong readers and the signals sent to schools by accountability measures. The bottom line: reading comprehension is a slow-growing plant, and the demand for rapid results on annual tests may be encouraging poor classroom practice—giving kids a sugar rush of test preparation, skills, and strategies when a well-rounded diet of knowledge and vocabulary is what’s really needed to grow good readers. Assessment and evaluation policy must ensure that these long-term investments in the building blocks of language growth are rewarded, not punished. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), states have the opportunity to do exactly that.</p>
<p>States also have the freedom to rethink teacher accountability. Because broad, general knowledge builds broad, general reading comprehension ability, school-wide accountability for reading makes far more sense than individual teacher accountability. Every school subject builds the knowledge base that contributes to a child’s reading comprehension ability (you need to know some science to make sense of a science text; history to make sense of a history text, etc.).</p>
<p>Take the comparatively simple task of teaching students to decode. At a minimum, it requires K–2 teachers. For students who struggle, special education teachers, speech pathologists, and others are often involved. Now consider building knowledge: Individual teacher accountability on a fourth-grade reading comprehension test, for instance, is <em>unfair</em> because children’s comprehension depends on what they’ve learned every year, in school and out (a reading test is a <a href="http://prospect.org/article/theres-no-such-thing-reading-test">de facto test</a> of background knowledge); it’s also <em>unproductive</em> because it lets the early-grade teachers off the hook if they don’t contribute by teaching the knowledge-building subjects. School-wide accountability for reading fosters teamwork.</p>
<p>Yet some teachers do not pull their weight, even when in a supportive school. Elliot Regenstein of the Ounce of Prevention Fund <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/states-don%E2%80%99t-leave-k%E2%80%933-accountability-behind-under-essa">offers a sensible solution</a>: an external inspectorate of teaching, particularly in the untested early grades. We fully agree with Regenstein that “great teaching in the early years is both rigorous in its content and fun for the kids in its delivery. It requires far more skill than many education leaders understand.” But that lack of understanding makes creating such an effective inspectorate very challenging. Let’s not end up like England, where, according to Daisy Christodoulou, the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Myths-About-Education-Christodoulou/dp/0415746825">inspectorate system reinforces ineffective practices</a>. States will have to be vigilant to create and sustain productive inspectorates—but the reward is likely to be well worth the effort.</p>
<p>Strong decoding instruction remains absolutely essential; states should ensure that students are mastering basic reading skills in the early grades. Here are three plans to complement important skills instruction by focusing on patiently investing in building knowledge and vocabulary across the curriculum and grade levels. Our first two suggestions work with existing reading comprehension assessments. The third takes advantage of ESSA’s “innovative assessment” pilot.</p>
<p><strong>Option 1</strong>: Incentivize adoption of a knowledge-rich curriculum</p>
<p>ELA standards assume that schools have strong curricula in place across subjects, or <a href="http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2012/09/20/the-57-most-important-words-in-education-reform-ever/">encourage the adoption of them.</a> It shouldn’t be left to chance. Every school—particularly those serving disadvantaged learners—should be encouraged to have a knowledge-rich curriculum that results in virtually all students scoring proficient in reading comprehension by the eighth grade. The nature of language growth is such that in earlier grades, scores will likely fluctuate (especially in high-poverty schools) as academic domains that have been taught may or may not appear on any particular reading test. By eighth grade, a well-rounded and well-implemented curriculum should result in all children having the broad knowledge they need to be proficient readers—just like most privileged kids do today.</p>
<p>Schools in which at least 85 percent of students in each subgroup are proficient should continue to do what’s working for their students. Schools that don’t meet that high bar might be required to:</p>
<ul><li>Participate in state-developed training on what makes great readers (i.e., systematic decoding instruction plus knowledge-rich lessons in science, history, geography, and the arts).</li>
<li>Participate in state-developed training on how to create or adopt a specific, coherent, cumulative curriculum that results in students acquiring broad knowledge and a large vocabulary.</li>
<li>Develop and implement such a curriculum, giving at least 150 minutes each week to science, 150 minutes each week to social studies, and sixty minutes each week to the arts in K–5.</li>
<li>Develop and give curriculum-based interim reading comprehension assessments, such that the passages cover domains that have been taught (and thus hold more diagnostic value for teachers).</li>
</ul><p>In districts with high student mobility rates, states should strongly encourage the adoption of a district-wide scope and sequence—a list of all the ideas, concepts, and topics taught in each subject and grade—developed with the participation of educators from schools in each district. This document would provide more guidance to teachers than is offered by standards alone, but it would be less fleshed out than a full curriculum—allowing each school to customize its lesson plans, student projects, etc. Students who change schools would not end up with gaps and repetitions in their learning, which function as roadblocks to reading comprehension.</p>
<p>For its lowest-performing schools, states should take even stronger action, such as requiring the curriculum to be submitted to the state for review, sending teams to observe instruction and provide coaching (per Regenstein’s inspectorate), developing a model curriculum (or placing online the curricula of high-performing schools), and/or offering professional development and courses to increase teachers’ knowledge of the domains they should be teaching. States should also examine how these low-performing elementary schools are teaching and assessing decoding. When remedial decoding instruction is needed, states should help schools devise interventions that avoid the common practice of pulling students out of science, social studies, and art classes.</p>
<p><strong>Option 2</strong>: Create a state-wide model sequence</p>
<p>States that wish to strongly support building knowledge should convene educators to collaboratively develop a model grade-by-grade sequence of academic domains to teach in each grade. This model might be put online as a scaffold for schools as they develop their curricula, but it should not be mandatory. If policy makers need to be convinced there’s a demand for this, they should check out the number of downloads in their own states of materials developed for <a href="https://www.engageny.org/">EngageNY</a>. It's been utilized as much by teachers outside the state as by the New York instructors it was built to serve.</p>
<p>The sequence should specify academic domains (like ancient Egypt or gravity) for every subject in each grade. Above all it should be coherent and cumulative, ensuring that all children have broad knowledge—including in art and music—by the end of eighth grade. Such a sequence would have two major benefits. First, teacher preparation and professional development could guarantee that all teachers have deep knowledge of the domains they are responsible for teaching. Second, children who change schools would have far less interruption in their education. Moving to a new neighborhood would no longer result in learning about the American Revolution twice while missing out on World War I (at present, there’s no guarantee that kids learn either). Even better, if a consortium of states created a model sequence, publishers could create slimmer, more focused textbooks that covered the domains in the sequence—not eight hundred pages on every topic a teacher might want to cover.</p>
<p><strong>Option 3</strong>: Using the ESSA pilot provision, create a state-wide sequence and sequence-based reading tests</p>
<p>States interested in using ESSA to increase reading ability while also creating more coherent educational systems could follow this idea to its logical conclusion: creating state-wide sequences—and <em>sequence-based reading comprehension assessments</em>—for grades 3–8.</p>
<p>ESSA’s innovative assessment pilot encourages up to seven states to completely rethink the role of testing in teaching and learning. Sequence-based reading assessments would make the subject matter of the passages predictable (more like assessments in other subjects), reassuring teachers that if they teach the specified domains, their students will be optimally prepared to comprehend the passages they are to be tested on. There would be nothing to be gained from preparatory drills that don’t contribute to students’ knowledge base (and hence their comprehension ability).</p>
<p>The importance of this to the teaching profession <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/02/us-asia-education-differences/471564/">cannot be overstated</a>. With the sole exception of reading/ELA, every teacher—from third-grade math to AP U.S. History—knows the subject matter students must learn in order to prepare for a test. The “<a href="http://prospect.org/article/theres-no-such-thing-reading-test">black box</a>” nature of reading tests is actively <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/lets-tell-the-truth-high-stakes-tests-damage-reading-instruction">undermining reading achievement</a>, particularly among disadvantaged kids.</p>
<p>Ideally, sequence-based assessments would be cumulative. Instead of tests with reading passages that sample some topics only from the domains for that grade, they would sample from all of the domains in the current and prior grades. This mirrors the cumulative nature of building knowledge and places appropriate responsibility on K–2 teachers. Most importantly, it rewards consistent investment in knowledge and vocabulary—precisely what is missing from current practice (and dis-incentivized in current policy).</p>
<p>Cumulative, sequence-based reading comprehension assessments would incentivize all teachers to teach everything in the sequence. They would lead to broad knowledge, reduce the extent to which scores are a reflection of what has been learned at home, eliminate the temptation to spend time on test-prep drills, and provide a more accurate picture of the schools’ contribution to children’s performance.</p>
<p align="center">***</p>
<p>These are but three ideas among many. But the overarching principal is what wise policy makers must keep in mind: Reading comprehension is not a skill that schools teach, it’s a condition they create. Accountability plans must ensure that every student gets the broad knowledge and vocabulary that remain the unacknowledged drivers of language proficiency. Higher standards simply cannot be met without them. </p>
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</ul>Wed, 02 Mar 2016 20:51:15 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59328 at https://edexcellence.netCan higher standards survive their own success?https://edexcellence.net/articles/can-higher-standards-survive-their-own-success
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Can higher standards survive their own success?</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-standards.jpg?itok=F3oRhXzH" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/robert-pondiscio">Robert Pondiscio</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">March 01, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>On the campaign trail, Senator Ted Cruz <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2015/02/28/ted-cruz-we-should-repeal-every-word-of-common-core/">reliably wins applause</a> with a call to "repeal every word of Common Core." It's a promise he will be hard-pressed to keep should he find himself in the White House next January. Aside from the bizarre impracticality of that comment as phrased (which words shall we repeal first? "Phonics"? "Multiplication"? Or "Gettysburg Address"?), the endlessly debated, frequently pilloried standards are now a deeply entrenched feature of America's K–12 education landscape—love 'em or hate 'em.</p>
<p>Common Core has achieved "phenomenal success in statehouses across the country," notes <em>Education Next</em>. In a <a href="http://educationnext.org/after-common-core-states-set-rigorous-standards/" title="Link: http://educationnext.org/after-common-core-states-set-rigorous-standards/">study published last month</a>, the periodical found that "thirty-six states strengthened their proficiency standards between 2013 and 2015, while just five states weakened them." That's almost entirely a function of Common Core. </p>
<p><em>Education Next</em> began grading individual states’ standards in 1995, comparing the extent to which their state tests' definition of proficiency aligned with the gold-standard National Assessment of Educational Progress assessment (often referred to as "the nation's report card”). That year, six states received an A grade. As recently as four years ago, only Massachusetts earned that distinction. Today, nearly half of all states, including the District of Columbia, have earned A ratings. More tellingly, only one state (Texas) was given a D.</p>
<p>Things look very different today. Unfortunately, many states have chosen to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-the-age-of-common-core-states-are-still-defining-proficient-differently/2016/02/21/fc5e2ea6-d75c-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html" title="Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/in-the-age-of-common-core-states-are-still-defining-proficient-differently/2016/02/21/fc5e2ea6-d75c-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html">go their own way</a> on annual tests, robbing Common Core of one of its main selling points: the ability to compare test results across state lines. Yet <a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/02/a_map_of_states_2015_testing_p.html" title="Link: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/02/a_map_of_states_2015_testing_p.html">over half</a> are still part of the two main Common Core testing consortia, PARCC and Smarter Balanced. A <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-02-26/link" title="Link: link">new report</a> from my colleagues at the Fordham Institute suggests that the tests our children now sit for are considerably more challenging than those taken by their older siblings a few short years ago. "They tend to reflect the content deemed essential in the Common Core standards and demand much from students cognitively. They are, in fact, the kind of tests that many teachers have asked state officials to build for years," note authors <a href="http://edexcellence.net/about-us/fordham-staff/nancy-doorey" title="Link: http://edexcellence.net/about-us/fordham-staff/nancy-doorey">Nancy Doorey</a> and <a href="http://edexcellence.net/about-us/fordham-staff/morgan-polikoff">Morgan Polikoff</a>. "Now they have them."</p>
<p>In short, and in short order, academic standards are much richer in content and intellectual rigor than they were two or three years ago. Consequently, the bar for proficiency is higher. Despite withering political attacks, the line has held. The question now is, for how long? </p>
<p>Given the enormous investments that many states have made to implement higher standards—spanning everything from professional development to the new tests themselves—there will likely be no wholesale retreat from Common Core. But that doesn't mean there can't or won't be a slow bleeding out of rigor and quality. Raising standards is easy; meeting them is hard. "Enforcing" them, or supporting them in a meaningful accountability system, remains a challenge. Only the most pie-eyed optimist would envision the vast majority of American children suddenly soaring to proficiency as a pure function of raised standards. The best-case scenario would be far more children graduating from high school genuinely prepared for college, some manner of post-secondary education or training, or the workforce. But that will require the work of years, even decades.</p>
<p>A second good outcome that time might reveal is a general recognition that our education system has a comprehensive capacity shortage at every level. John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, famously observed, "Sports do not build character, they reveal it." Higher standards and proficiency levels could be used to produce a "Wooden effect"; that is, they might reveal much about state and district education systems—from the effectiveness of curricula to the efficacy of our schools of education, which still train the vast majority of the nearly four million teachers in American classrooms. </p>
<p>With the adoption of the Every Student Succeeds Act, states are ostensibly back in the driver's seat on testing and accountability. In theory, they should be less likely to set low proficiency standards, since they no longer need to fear federal penalties in any but the most dire cases. But not all pressure comes from the top. Attention must be paid to the "opt-out" movement that has roiled New York, New Jersey, Colorado and other states. It's anyone's guess how much patience parents will have with more than half of children being labeled below proficient—especially if the source of test pressures merely shifts from Washington, D.C. to the fifty state capitals. In a perfect world, high standards and challenging proficiency levels would prompt pushy parents to demand more from schools, districts, and state policy makers. But with natural alliances between educators and parents born of proximity—parents generally trust their kids' teachers—it might be easier to simply blame "inappropriate" standards and "meaningless" tests. Stay tuned. Politicians risk a major backlash at the polls if they send out too much bad news, flunk too many kids, or give F ratings to too many schools. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that, for the time being, a new normal has been created with extraordinary speed across much of the country. Whether it sticks or suffers the death of a thousand cuts comes down to two questions: Does the political will exist to maintain higher standards for the long haul? And does the capacity exist in K–12 education at large to raise significant numbers of American children to meet these definitions of "proficiency?" The real test of Common Core comes when the answer to either of these questions is no</p>
<p>Much of what we know about our state education systems is about to be put to the test. But the biggest test of all will be that of our appetite for honesty.</p>
<p><em>Editor's note: This post was <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-02-26/common-core-has-made-higher-standards-and-tougher-tests-the-new-normal">originally published in a slightly different form</a> by</em> U.S. News &amp; World Report.</p>
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</ul>Tue, 01 Mar 2016 16:50:38 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59318 at https://edexcellence.netHow to fix reading in the era of ESSAhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/how-to-fix-reading-in-the-era-of-essa
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>How to fix reading in the era of ESSA</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-essafixreading.jpg?itok=Eh4fEZrT" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/robert-pondiscio">Robert Pondiscio</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-ext-author-name field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lisa Hansel</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">February 24, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>In the past two decades, something extraordinary has happened with very little fanfare: The reading ability of our lowest-performing children has increased significantly. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/subject/publications/main2012/pdf/2013456.pdf">NAEP</a>), between 1990 and 2012, the scores of nine-year-olds at the tenth and twenty-fifth percentiles increased by roughly two grade levels (about twenty points). For those children, those gains aren’t just impressive—they’re potentially life-changing.</p>
<p>At the same time, there has been a fourteen-point gain (a little more than a grade level) among fourth graders at the fiftieth percentile and a mere six-point gain among those at the seventy-fifth and ninetieth percentiles.</p>
<p>What’s causing this long-term trend of much greater gains among lower-performing students than higher-performing ones? That’s hard to say. There are many plausible explanations, but one that seems likely is that K–2 teachers have simply gotten better at teaching “decoding” (learning to sound out words). Nationwide, there’s been an increased focus on evidence-based practices, including high-profile initiatives like the <a href="https://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/pubs/nrp/Pages/report.aspx">National Reading Panel</a> report and <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/index.html">Reading First</a>. Both stressed that children must be explicitly taught how to decode, and most early reading programs—and, more significantly, teachers—seem to have gotten the message.</p>
<p>But decoding is only the first step in developing strong readers. And there’s reason to believe that in striving for proficiency, many other steps have been neglected. As Nell K. Duke, one of the nation’s reading researchers, <a href="http://futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/22_02_04.pdf">wrote</a>:</p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in;">When the aim is to show reading improvements in a short period of time, spending large amounts of time on word-reading skill and its foundations, and relatively little on comprehension, vocabulary, and conceptual and content knowledge, makes sense. Measurable gains in phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and word reading can be achieved quickly and, for most students, relatively easily. In contrast, gains in comprehension, vocabulary, and conceptual knowledge are harder to measure, at least in young children, and harder to achieve. <em>Yet the long-term consequences of failing to attend to these areas cannot be overstated </em>[emphasis added].</p>
<p>Unlike decoding, reading comprehension is not a skill that can be directly taught, practiced, and mastered. Expansive knowledge and vocabulary, accumulated over time, are the keys to comprehension. If you know a lot about dinosaurs, for example, and have learned to decode, you can read with understanding about dinosaurs with little difficulty. But if you’ve never heard of dinosaurs, your ability to read complex texts about them is compromised.</p>
<p>As your broad, general knowledge grows, so will your broad, general reading ability. The sheer volume of subjects a literate individual has some knowledge of, and the size of a proficient reader’s vocabulary, mean that the race to improve reading comprehension is by definition a marathon. But our testing and accountability policies have tended to demand that teachers treat it as a sprint. That might be why NAEP reading scores among thirteen-year-olds have only increased by 3–8 points (looking across the spectrum from the tenth to the ninetieth percentiles) between 1990 and 2012; among seventeen year olds, they have <em>decreased</em> by 3–5 points. These are the long-term consequences to which Duke alludes.</p>
<p>By returning control to the states, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides an opportunity for states to rethink the enticements baked into accountability policies. They can now incentivize long-term investments in building knowledge and vocabulary over short-term investments in boosting scores, which too often spike quickly before plateauing or even fading.</p>
<p>It is not a mystery why reading comprehension scores are so stubbornly tied to socioeconomic status. Knowledge and vocabulary grow exponentially, beginning at birth. Children with well-educated parents come to school with larger vocabularies and more knowledge. Their verbal advantage grows each day during dinnertime conversation, bedtime read-alouds, weekend museum visits, sports and music lessons, and other forms of “<a href="http://www.asanet.org/images/members/docs/pdf/featured/lareau.pdf">concerted cultivation</a>.” Reading researcher Keith Stanovich dubbed this structural advantage in language and knowledge the “<a href="http://keithstanovich.com/Site/Research_on_Reading_files/RRQ86A.pdf">Matthew Effect</a>,” from the biblical passage in the Gospel of Matthew about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It neatly captures the heart of the issue: Privileged children come to school on day one with larger stores of knowledge and vocabulary than their disadvantage peers. That gives new knowledge and vocabulary fertile soil in which to root. The gaps don’t merely persist, they widen. The longer we wait, the wider the gap grows.</p>
<p>Valorizing knowledge acquisition is the secret sauce that’s missing from education policy, testing, and accountability. Preferred policy areas—like teacher quality, choice, chartering and merit pay—are agnostic to curricular content. This is a hiding-in-plain-sight lever that policy makers have seldom thought to pull. ESSA could change that.</p>
<p>The principal challenge for state policy makers is to embrace a clearer, more accurate view of what reading comprehension actually is: a reflection of the sum of a child’s education across the curriculum, not a “skill” to be taught. Once you see reading through this lens, a different policy picture starts to emerge almost unbidden. What kids do in school all day—not just in reading instruction—starts to matter a lot. If this insight were reflected in the way we structure and incentivize schools, elementary school would look very different than it does today. To pick one obvious example: A nationally representative <a href="http://www.horizon-research.com/2012nssme/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2012-NSSME-Full-Report1.pdf">survey</a> published in 2012 found that K–3 teachers spent just 16–19 minutes per day on social studies and science; grades 4–6 teachers spent just 21–24 minutes a day. This is exactly the wrong approach once you see building knowledge as integral to reading achievement.</p>
<p>“The mistaken idea that reading is a skill,” <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/daniel-willingham/willingham-reading-is-not-a-sk.html">notes</a> cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, “may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country. The knowledge base problem must be solved.”</p>
<p>If we want all children to be great readers, education policies must actively incentivize teaching reading skills plus science, history, geography, and the arts from the first days of school. Substantial gains in decoding have shown we can get kids to the starting line. But we’re leaving them stuck there.</p>
<p>Next week, we’ll talk about the implications for state policy makers of this clear view of what reading comprehension actually is. </p>
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</ul>Wed, 24 Feb 2016 19:04:36 +0000kmahnken@edexcellence.net59303 at https://edexcellence.netImplementing the Every Student Succeeds Act toward a coherent, aligned assessment systemhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/implementing-the-every-student-succeeds-act-toward-a-coherent-aligned-assessment-system
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act toward a coherent, aligned assessment system</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/jessica-poiner">Jessica Poiner</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">February 17, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Way back in the days of NCLB, testing often existed in a vacuum. Lengthy administration windows created long delays between taking the test and receiving results from it; many assessments were poorly aligned with state standards and local curricula; communication with parents and teachers was insufficient; and too much test preparation heightened the anxiety level for teachers and students alike. These issues largely prevented assessments from being used to support and drive effective teaching and learning. That doesn’t mean just state tests, either, but rather the full range of assessments given during the year and across curricula.</p>
<p>But the new federal education law creates a chance for a fresh start. While ESSA retains yearly assessment in grades 3–8 and once in high school, the <em>role</em> of testing has changed. States are now empowered to use additional factors besides test scores in their school accountability systems, states may cap the amount of instructional time devoted to testing, funding exists to streamline testing, and teacher evaluations need no longer be linked to student scores. These changes may mean less anxiety, but that won’t equate to better outcomes unless significant reforms occur when states design their new assessment systems.</p>
<p>A new report from the <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/">Center for American Progress</a> (CAP) focuses on how to implement such systems. Its authors utilize parent and teacher focus groups, online parent surveys, and interviews with assessment experts and others to pinpoint current problems with testing. Their findings show, for example, that parents recognize the value of testing but want it to be better at providing individualized feedback to their child; teachers crave more time and support (think sample tests, high-quality instruction materials, and opportunities to observe excellent teachers); and stakeholders need better communication. The lack of alignment among standards, curriculum, and tests is an exceptionally significant problem.</p>
<p>To address these issues, the CAP team envisions an ambitious, multifaceted system that routinely evaluates students’ knowledge and skills. It would do so using formative and interim assessments to provide timely and actionable feedback to teachers and parents, culminating in a summative test determining whether students have met grade-level expectations and made satisfactory progress. They supply recommendations to guide federal, state, and local leaders as they implement ESSA. For states, these recommendations include conducting alignment studies to ensure that students are tested on what they learn (and that what they learn matches state standards); developing better communication tools such as clear score reports; and demanding that test results be delivered in a timely way. For districts, CAP recommends that leaders eliminate redundant tests, support teachers’ understanding of assessment design and administration, communicate more effectively with parents about the purpose and use of tests, and streamline assessment logistics. Schools, meanwhile, can improve assessment systems by working with teachers to communicate with parents, stopping unnecessary test preparation, and making test taking less stressful for kids.</p>
<p>All in all, CAP’s recommendations are solid and insightful, and they deserve attention from state and district leaders as they begin to implement the new federal law. </p>
<p>SOURCE: Catherine Brown, Ulrich Boser, Scott Sargrad, and Max Marchitello, “<a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2016/01/29/130115/implementing-the-every-student-succeeds-act/">Implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act Toward a Coherent, Aligned Assessment System</a>,” Center for American Progress (January 2016). </p>
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</ul>Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:11:14 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59277 at https://edexcellence.netSchool policies have gotten smarter in the decade after No Child Left Behindhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/school-policies-have-gotten-smarter-in-the-decade-after-no-child-left-behind
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>School policies have gotten smarter in the decade after No Child Left Behind</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-smarter%20policies.jpg?itok=9lEq4-Le" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/michael-j-petrilli">Michael J. Petrilli</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/chester-e-finn-jr">Chester E. Finn, Jr.</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">February 17, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>A decade ago, U.S. education policies were a mess. It was the classic problem of good intentions gone awry.</p>
<p>At the core of the good idea was the commonsense insight that if we want better and more equitable results from our education system, we should set clear expectations for student learning, measure whether our kids are meeting those expectations, and hold schools accountable for their outcomes (mainly gauged in terms of academic achievement).</p>
<p>And sure enough, under the <a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/no-child-left-behind-overview-definition-summary.html">No Child Left Behind law</a>, every state in the land mustered academic standards in (at least) reading and math, annual tests in grades 3–8, and some sort of accountability system for their public schools.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, those standards were mostly vague, shoddy, or misguided; the tests were simplistic and their “proficiency” bar set too low. The accountability systems encouraged all manner of dubious practices, such as focusing teacher effort on a small subset of students at risk of failing the exams rather than advancing every child’s learning.</p>
<p>What a difference a decade makes. To be sure, some rooms in the education policy edifice remain in disarray. But thanks to the hard work and political courage of the states, finally abetted by some implacable leaders in Washington, the core elements of standards-based reform have seen a reasonably thorough cleansing and dramatic upgrade.</p>
<p>Take the academic standards themselves. We and our colleagues at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute have been fans of the Common Core standards. By our lights, they’re dramatically clearer and stronger than most of the state standards they replaced and on par with the rest. They do a good job of incorporating the evidence on what it takes for students to be “college- and career-ready,” and they get most of the big issues right. What’s more, despite all of the political sturm und drang around the Common Core, these ambitious standards are still in place (sometimes with different labels) in more than forty states.</p>
<p>But that’s not all. Part of the promise of the Common Core initiative was that the new standards would be joined by “next-generation” assessments—tests that match the intellectual demands of the Common Core, are harder to game, and actually deserve to guide classroom instruction rather than encourage mindless test preparation. Now we know that this promise has also been kept. A new Fordham study, <a href="http://edexcellence.net/events/evaluating-the-content-and-quality-of-next-generation-assessments">“Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments,”</a> found that the two most widely used new tests (<a href="http://www.parcconline.org/">PARCC</a> and <a href="http://www.smarterbalanced.org/">Smarter Balanced</a>) are well matched to the Common Core and plenty challenging. (Two other assessments that we examined are strong too, though not quite as good a fit for the standards.)</p>
<p>It would be better if half the states hadn’t decided to go their own way on testing, dropping out of the PARCC or Smarter Balanced consortia (or never joining in the first place). It may turn out that their tests—most of them new—are also sound, but we won’t know until somebody gets under their hoods to see.</p>
<p>What we do know is that even these go-it-alone states have made it more challenging to pass their tests, by setting their “cut scores” at dramatically higher levels than before. This provides a more honest report to parents, teachers, and principals about whether their kids are on track for success. As Harvard University’s Paul Peterson recently wrote in <em><a href="http://educationnext.org/after-common-core-states-set-rigorous-standards/">Education Next</a></em>, “the Common Core consortium has achieved one of its key policy objectives: the raising of state proficiency standards throughout much of the United States.”</p>
<p>Stronger standards, better tests, higher cut scores—so far, so good. But that leaves one last element: the accountability systems themselves (a.k.a. the calculations and labels that states use to grade schools and decide which are doing well and which are candidates for intervention). Here states still have some distance to travel. But thanks to the <a href="http://www.ed.gov/essa">Every Student Succeeds Act</a> (the replacement for No Child Left Behind that President Obama signed late last year), they have more latitude to design systems that accurately distinguish between strong and weak schools.</p>
<p>States can now focus most of their analysis on individual student progress over time—the fairest way to assess the value that schools add to student learning and the best way to disentangle school grades from demographics over which they have scant control. The new law encourages them also to look beyond test scores at “other indicators of student success or school quality”—a smart idea if done right. And they can focus on all their students, not just those on the edge of proficiency, thus correcting our education system’s longstanding neglect of those who have already cleared the bar.</p>
<p>Importantly, the new law also removes the federal mandate—pushed by former Education Secretary Arne Duncan—that states deploy test-based teacher evaluations. That move proved politically poisonous, putting too much weight on the bad old tests while sapping teacher support for the new ones. (Student results will remain available, however, for states and districts that want to incorporate them in teacher evaluations.)</p>
<p>We’ve been known for ages as education gadflies, and we still find plenty to fault when it comes to policy and practice in the United States. But let us be clear: Despite what you might hear from opt-outers and other critics, U.S. standards, tests, and accountability systems are all dramatically stronger, fairer, and more honest than they were a decade ago. You might even call it progress.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in a slightly different form in <u><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/progress-in-education-policies-after-no-child/2016/02/12/72ccd796-d0f9-11e5-88cd-753e80cd29ad_story.html">the Washington Post</a></u></em>.</p>
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</ul>Wed, 17 Feb 2016 20:58:51 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59274 at https://edexcellence.netSteering and rowing in the age of ESSAhttps://edexcellence.net/articles/steering-and-rowing-in-the-age-of-essa
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>Steering and rowing in the age of ESSA</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-oar.jpg?itok=f1gzs-2w" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-related-staff field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/about-us/fordham-staff/andy-smarick-0">Andy Smarick</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">February 17, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>If you care about state education policy and/or the new federal education law, you ought to spend some time doing three things. First, consider how the performance of schools (and networks of schools) needs to be assessed. Second, read the short Fordham report <em><a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/State-Education-Agency-Helm-Not-Oar-FINAL.pdf">At the Helm, Not the Oar</a></em>. Third, encourage your favorite state’s department of education to undertake an organizational strategic planning process.</p>
<p>All three are part of a single, important exercise: figuring out what role the state department of education must play in public schooling.</p>
<p>By now, everyone knows that ESSA returns to states the authority to create K–12 accountability systems. So it’s worth giving some thought to what, exactly, schools and districts should be held accountable for. What do we want them to actually accomplish?</p>
<p>But even if we get clear on the “what,” the “who” and “how” remain. Which entity or entities should be tasked with this work, and how should they go about it?</p>
<p>In <em>At the Helm</em>, which I co-wrote in 2014 with Juliet Squire, we argue that there are lots and lots of things handed to state departments of education (also known as state education agencies, or “SEAs”) that could be better achieved elsewhere. We make the case that SEAs have become the default recipient of virtually all state-level K–12 obligations, even though they aren’t set up to succeed in many cases.</p>
<p>So as states create new accountability systems over the next eighteen months or so, the basic issue will be this: What should be delegated to SEAs, and what should live elsewhere?</p>
<p>We conceived of and penned this report long before ESSA was passed, so we were fortunate to have the space to think in terms of principles instead of specifics. That is, we weren’t caught up in the details of the law’s rules on academic metrics, non-academic indicators, school designations, interventions, and so on. Having worked at an SEA, Julie and I were thinking more along the lines of all state-level duties (distributing state funds, credentialing teachers, implementing harassment/bullying regulations, authorizing charter schools, managing longitudinal data systems, etc.).</p>
<p>Accordingly, we created some rules of the road for deciding which activities should be given to the SEA and which would be better handled by other bodies. We even came up with an easy-to-remember heuristic we called the “Four Cs:” Control, Contract, Cleave, and Create.</p>
<p>The gist is this: There are absolutely things that a single government body should do (control). But there are also things the SEA can empower others to do with some state oversight (contract) and some things the SEA can simply hand off to others (cleave). And if we’re to rely on non-SEAs to do more work, those entities need to be developed (create).</p>
<p>If you can appreciate the inherent limitations of the SEA and entertain the idea of some state-level work being conducted by other state bodies, quasi-governmental entities, nonprofit organizations, or other organizations, then you can probably recognize the major opportunity afforded by ESSA. It catalyzes states to think anew, offers them the time to be smart about it, and gives them the authority try novel approaches.</p>
<p>Yes, SEAs should probably continue to administer state tests. But must the SEA be the one to analyze and distribute the data or create growth scores? Maybe not.</p>
<p>If a state wants to use parent or student surveys in its accountability system, should the SEA create and administer them? Not necessarily.</p>
<p>If the state wants to use inspectorates to assess individual schools, or have nonprofit operators start new schools to replace struggling ones, must the SEA run these processes? Perhaps not.</p>
<p>The obvious question, then, becomes: If not the SEA, who? In the report, we consider this and highlight a range of organizations that are emerging to take on what were once considered SEA duties. This ecosystem of external entities isn’t yet flourishing. But in many places, it’s starting to bud and bloom.</p>
<p>And that’s where step three comes in—getting your SEA to undertake an organizational strategic planning process. Now’s the time to consider the capacities of the SEA and make use of its strengths. It’s also the time to get clear-eyed about the SEA’s innate deficiencies and make sure important work is conducted by the organizations best equipped to succeed.</p>
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</ul>Wed, 17 Feb 2016 18:35:47 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59272 at https://edexcellence.netESSA Accountability Design Competition: My big takeawayshttps://edexcellence.net/articles/essa-accountability-design-competition-my-big-takeaways
<div class="field field-name-title field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="dc:title"><h1>ESSA Accountability Design Competition: My big takeaways</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/styles/kraken_optimized/s3/banner-ESSA%20competition_0.jpg?itok=BgZHeldH" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-ext-author-name field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Joanne Weiss</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-post-date field-type-ds field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">February 16, 2016</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>On February 2, I had the privilege of being a judge for the Fordham Institute’s <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/accountability-under-essa-announcing-a-design-competition">ESSA Accountability Design Competition</a>. It’s widely known that I’m a fan of using competition to drive policy innovation, and this competition did not disappoint. Fordham received a <a href="http://edexcellence.net/articles/essa-accountability-design-competition-the-contenders">stunning array of proposals</a> from teachers, students, state leaders, and policy makers.</p>
<p>But before we turn to the insights buried in these pages, I want to praise the competition’s conception, which mirrored the process that states should replicate as they design their own accountability systems. Contestants explained how their proposed accountability systems would support a larger vision of educational success and spur desired actions. They laid out their design principles—attributes like simplicity, precision, fairness, and clarity. They defined the indicators that should therefore be tracked, and they explained how those indicators would roll up into ratings of school quality. Finally, they laid out how each rating would be used to inform or determine consequences for schools. All decisions were explained in the context of how they would forward the larger vision.</p>
<p>Together, these proposals represent a variety of both practical and philosophical approaches to accountability system design. Here are the five major themes I found most noteworthy.</p>
<p><strong>1. The ascendance of growth</strong></p>
<p>For the past fourteen years, the currency in education has been “proficiency”—the percentage of students scoring at or above “proficient” on their state’s standardized assessment. There is no doubt that proficiency is important, and it remains a legally required academic indicator under ESSA. But the exclusive focus on proficiency under NCLB incented such well-documented perverse behaviors as states lowering the bar for what it meant to be proficient, as well as schools focusing improvement efforts only on those “bubble kids” whose performance was just below proficient.</p>
<p>In this competition, every applicant proposed adding growth measures to the accountability system to broaden the picture of a school’s academic performance. Growth models tell us how much a student has learned over a given period of time. Students who are behind need to grow “faster” (learn more in a year) than the typical student to catch up, or they need to be given more time to get through school. Similarly, students who are ahead need more challenges in order to ensure that they stay engaged and stretch to reach their potential. Without measuring growth, educators can’t assess how well their schools are doing at advancing students’ learning.</p>
<p>A variety of approaches to measuring growth were proposed. Bellwether’s <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Aldeman-BellwetherEducationPartners.docx">Chad Aldeman</a> suggested that schools chart whether each student moved “up” from one performance band to the next over time, moved backwards, or stood still. While this is only a rough proxy for growth, it has the benefit of being easy to understand, feasible to implement with today’s state assessments, and clear to every student about where he or she stands.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal_StudentVoiceTeam_PrichardCommittee.docx">Pritchard Committee high school students</a> advocated for the use of student growth percentiles, based on the Colorado Growth Model—as did <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Wenning-BeFoundation.pdf">Richard Wenning</a>, the father of that model. Pritchard noted that this approach can be graphically depicted to allow the “public to easily distinguish [among] schools,” including those that serve different subgroups of students well (or poorly).</p>
<p>Most of the other proposals offered variations on value-added growth models. The calculation approaches to measuring growth get wonky fast (see <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Dorn-ArizonaStateUniversity.docx">Sherman Dorn</a> for a model that includes the most words I had to look up), but the team of <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-PolikoffDuqueAndWrabel-USCAndBaltimoreCountyPublicSchools.docx">Polikoff, Duque, and Wrabel</a> transformed all student scores into a nicely understandable 0–100 point scale, and upped the ante by using a two-step value-added model to control completely for all student characteristics.</p>
<p><a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Ross-TeachPlus.pdf">TeachPlus</a> advocated for direct measurements of growth using computer-adaptive tests capable of pinpointing student performance along a wide, multi-grade learning progression. Though this is my personal favorite, our current standardized tests (even the computer-adaptive Smarter Balanced) don’t yet do this accurately or reliably enough.</p>
<p>One assessment issue stands in the way of measuring growth properly. NCLB required that assessments measure only “on grade level” knowledge. So every fifth grader, for example, had to take the test of fifth-grade knowledge. If that fifth grader started the school year performing at a second-grade (or an eighth-grade) level, and gained 1.5 years of learning over the course of that school year, the fifth-grade test would not accurately assess that student’s growth; doing so would require that the test include “out of grade level” items. ESSA removes this constraint, so it is now possible to measure growth accurately. However, states’ current standardized assessments are built for the old rules and do not (yet) capture the full range of student performance. If pressed by states on this issue, the assessment community will (I hope) address this challenge.</p>
<p><strong>2. Juding school quality: Let me count the ways</strong></p>
<p>Under ESSA, states are required to include in their accountability systems at least one non-academic, statewide measure of school quality. While states may be tempted to use easy-to-report data like school attendance to comply with this requirement, the Fordham applicants showed us the hidden potential here.</p>
<p>Applicants thought through their theories of change and figured out what additional data was needed to promote the improvement behaviors they were looking for. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal_StudentVoiceTeam_PrichardCommittee.docx">Pritchard</a> reminded us that “students are the chief stakeholders in schools” and advocated for surveys and open-ended responses to inform improvement at the school level. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Ferguson-HarvardUniversity.pdf">Ronald Ferguson</a> agreed. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-PolikoffDuqueAndWrabel-USCAndBaltimoreCountyPublicSchools.docx">Polikoff et al</a> did a terrific job of identifying five indicators that “incentivize schools to focus on desirable outcomes”: absenteeism (overall and chronic), student engagement and happiness (measured through surveys), equity (specifically disproportionality in discipline for different groups of students), students’ success in subsequent grades, and access to a full, rich curriculum for every student. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Wenning-BeFoundation.pdf">Wenning</a> drove home his focus on continuous improvement by proposing the use of digital portfolios for students. He also includes a set of “educator opportunity to learn and perform” indicators to focus schools on effective professional learning.</p>
<p>The research behind much of this work is compelling, and the format of the proposals makes it easy for policy makers to absorb the research quickly.</p>
<p><strong>3. Out of many, a few</strong></p>
<p>One of the tenets of NCLB was that every school would get one rating. While ESSA requires that each school be rated, nowhere does it require that only one rating be given to each school. And a number of proposals drove smartly through this crack in the door. Several applicants arrived at the key insight that different indicators can be used for different purposes. All of the indicators don’t have to be scored, weighted, and rolled up into one rating that’s used to make all accountability determinations.</p>
<p>The academic indicators, for example, can be used by states to make determinations about which schools are low-performing and require labeling and intervention. The academic indicators can also be used to identify strong schools (those to learn from) and mid-range schools (those that need to keep improving). The school quality indicators can then be used to diagnose the root causes of the problems and to point the way toward potential solutions. <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Ross-TeachPlus.pdf">TeachPlus</a> dubbed this a “two-tiered accountability system” where the second tier provides “metrics that are informative but not determinative.”</p>
<p>As <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Wenning-BeFoundation.pdf">Wenning</a> noted, his proposal “would not produce a single rating across indicators because a single rating combining so many measures would fail to promote public understanding [and would] mask important strengths and weaknesses.” <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-PolikoffDuqueAndWrabel-USCAndBaltimoreCountyPublicSchools.docx">Polikoff</a>, <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Ross-TeachPlus.pdf">TeachPlus</a>, and <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Education%20First.pdf">Education First</a> all concurred. They offered separate ratings for different types of information, believing that clear visualizations disaggregated by subgroup would help educators (and the public) identify and diagnose gaps, strengths, and problem areas.</p>
<p><strong>4. It takes a village</strong></p>
<p>Several applicants challenged another closely held principle of NCLB. They argued that the objective formulae at the center of most current accountability calculations are too blunt. Room for subjective judgment is sorely needed.</p>
<p>Different proposals offered various solutions to this problem. Several suggested that schools and communities customize or select indicators to meet their needs. One of my favorites, the <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Education%20First.pdf">Education First</a> proposal, included the design priority: “local communities should have real decision-making” power. They make good on this promise by laying out, in detail, a roadmap toward a wholly new type of accountability system. In it, statewide goals sit side-by-side with local goals, and easy-to-interpret reports provide insight into how schools are doing along both dimensions.</p>
<p>With a different take on the problem, the proposal from <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-ChuAndLerum-AmericaSucceeds.docx">Dale Chu and Eric Lerum</a> laid out roles for the SEA, the LEA, and the school; it also builds an accountability system that devolves the selection of indicators and the responsibility for consequences to the appropriate actor in the system. And <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Wenning-BeFoundation.pdf">Wenning</a> specified whether the school, district, and/or state should define the targets for each school quality indicator.</p>
<p>Looking at the problem in a totally different way, <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Aldeman-BellwetherEducationPartners.docx">Aldeman</a> proposed using a professional “inspectorate” (experts operating under contract with the state) to make the final accountability determinations. His formula over-identifies low-performing schools, then requires all of these schools to go through an expert review process. No school’s rating is final until the inspectors have spoken. Modeled on a successful U.K. approach, the hope is that low-performing schools will get more than just a rating; they’ll get expert advice on how to improve.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most far-out and creative idea comes from <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Dorn-ArizonaStateUniversity.docx">Dorn</a>, who proposes a citizen peer review process for low-performing schools. Dorn dubbed this the “grand jury” model (words that made my fellow competition judges cringe), but the analogy is strong. As Dorn puts it, accountability algorithms “omit critical context, especially around the judgment of schools with low-performing and vulnerable demographic subgroups.” His solution is to “insert citizen judgment around issues of education equity” by convening a civil grand jury that has independent subpoena authority, reviews evidence, and makes determinations about the fate of these schools. That’s community empowerment.</p>
<p><strong>5. The future is now</strong></p>
<p>While the competition was filled with creative policy ideas, only <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Wenning-BeFoundation.pdf">Wenning</a> designed a truly “next-generation” accountability system. He proposed, for example, the use of individual student digital portfolios that “contain evidence and credentials belonging to the student” and provide views for students, families, educators, colleges, and employers. He described a robust online data system that offers visualizations for each indicator disaggregated by student subgroup, so that schools’ strengths and areas for improvement are self-evident. And he builds in both customization and waiver opportunities (as does <a href="http://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/ESSAAccountabilityProposal-Education%20First.pdf">Education First</a>) to encourage innovation at the school and district levels. States moving rapidly toward technology-enabled, competency-based education models will find inspiration in Wenning’s ideas.</p>
<p>ESSA offers states the opportunity to develop their own aligned, coherent accountability system—one that forwards their state’s vision of educational improvement. The risk is that states will not take advantage of this opportunity: Either they will plead capacity constraints, tweak NCLB, and keep their current compliance machines in place; or they will take half-measures, throwing out NCLB and replacing it with an incoherent set of metrics. This competition charts better ways forward. It offers states an array of ways to think about accountability and provides coherent blueprints for how to get there. It’s a must-read for every state leader getting ready to embark on accountability redesign.</p>
<p><em>Joanne Weiss is an independent consultant to organizations on education programs, technologies, and policy. She is the former chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and led the Race to the Top and Race to the Top Assessment programs.</em></p>
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</ul>Tue, 16 Feb 2016 18:42:10 +0000ealpaugh@edexcellence.net59268 at https://edexcellence.net